• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 10, 2004

Rants about the network TV upfront sales process are all too common at ad industry conferences and panel discussions. It's rare--make that unheard of --that any of them actually accomplish anything about it. But to the surprise of a standing-room-only crowd at Wednesday's Association of National Advertisers' Television Advertising Forum in New York, that is exactly what happened.

Moments after a top media buying executive proposed the ANA form a committee comprised of top advertisers and the heads of the major media shops to tackle the upfront, ANA President-CEO Bob Liodice strode on stage and announced that the association was taking up the challenge. Liodice said a new subcommittee of the ANA's Television Advertising Committee would do whatever is "legally" possible to make the network buying process more palatable to national advertisers.

The initiative followed the release of a survey of top marketing executives on TV advertising issues that centered on the upfront, and a series of panel debates that rehashed the obligatory finger-pointing over whose responsibility it was to change the upfront--advertisers, agencies, networks--when a visibly fed up Carat CEO David Verklin issued the challenge: "Form an upfront committee... Get the seven CEOs [of the major media agencies] to come, and I think we can effect change very quickly."

While it's unclear exactly how the committee might work and how it could steer clear of antitrust issues, the effort is the first of its kind to at least attempt to develop an industry coalition that would take on advertiser's frustrations over the upfront sales process.

The last time the ad industry tried to develop a similar coalition to tackle a vexing industry problem--frustrations over TV audience measurement--it was soundly rejected on legal grounds. But some observers say that initiative--the Advertising Research Foundation's attempts to form a so-called joint industry committee, or JIC, to seize control of the TV ratings process--may have died prematurely. When the ARF proposed it, Nielsen threatened legal action and the ARF's executive team backed down. The ARF has a new executive team and new legal counsel, and one insider told MediaDailyNews on Wednesday that the foundation might once again take up that charge, especially given the new levels of frustration clients are feeling over Nielsen (see related story in today's coverage).

Meanwhile, the timing might be right for a joint industry committee to tackle the network upfront, said Jon Mandel, co-CEO of MediaCom, who seconded Verklin's suggestion, noting: "Essentially, now is the time. If we miss this opportunity, we've essentially missed it forever."

Even so, it remains to be seen how expediently the ANA membership might actually act on that opportunity. According to the association's executive survey, 80 percent of the members don't believe the upfront "might be fundamentally different than it is today" within two years. Forty-five percent said it would change within three to five years, while 10 percent said it would take six to ten years. Twenty-one percent said it would not change in the foreseeable future.

The survey did not ask what would cause it to change, but one thing was clear: if marketers could change the timing of the upfront, it would not occur in June or July, but in September or October (see results below). That could be a problem for the broadcast networks, which launch their new seasons at that time, and likely would not want to begin selling ad time for their new seasons just as the new shows were launching.

What would be the ideal month for the upfront to take place?

January      6% 
February     1% 
March        2% 
April        4% 
May          8% 
June         8% 
July         6% 
August      14% 
September   20% 
October     21%

November     7% 
December     3% 

Source: ANA Survey - TV'S Issues and Challenges: The Client Perspective, March 2004.