• by Joe Mandese , March 10, 2005

Syndication is turning up the 2005-06 upfront sales volume this week with a day-long series of pitches aimed at advertisers, media buyers, and especially planners, that was designed to sway their thinking - and their ad budgets - away from broadcast and cable networks. This year's pitch includes an array of improvements intended to make syndication a more palatable substitute for network TV, including less ad clutter, more branded entertainment and product integration opportunities, and a much quicker turnaround on TV commercial integration.

The Syndicated Network Television Association was scheduled to kick off the spin Wednesday morning during its so-called "SNTA Syndication Day 2005" kick-off, a daylong series of presentations, including a new module aimed specifically at media planners.

Capitalizing on Madison Avenue's obsession with branded content deals, a number of the SNTA members, which include top studios such as Warner Bros., Paramount, Tribune, Twentieth Television and NBC Universal, brought producers of first-run programming to the event with an eye toward striking product integration talks that could lead to new, presumably bigger upfront advertising budgets.

The syndication pitch comes just as the cable industry has begun increasing its own noise level, including a massive new research pitch by the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, and an unrelenting series of individual cable upfront sales presentations. In fact, Wednesday's SNTA Day coincided with The Weather Channel's upfront presentation in New York (see related story in today's MDN) making for a busy day of cross-town travel in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday.

The pre-upfront spin will culminate in a major new research presentation by Turner Broadcasting System that will precede the unveiling of the broadcast networks' 2005-06 prime-time schedules, that is expected to once again shift a significant share of upfront ad budgets from broadcast to cable and other alternatives. Wall Street analysts are already bracing for a "soft" broadcast network upfront, and the cable industry is already talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in upfront budgets moving their way.

While it's still unclear how much money might move to syndication, the studios are introducing relatively little high-profile original programming this year, and have a paucity of significant off-network series going into the syndication marketplace. In a sense, that is a positive statement of the stability of syndication's ongoing programs, but it also represents the inability to create clearances for new shows and expand the syndication marketplace.

Not surprisingly, the focus at this year's SNTA Day is more on business practices than major new programming. Among the sector's biggest sales claims, is the fact that top syndicators can now integrate national TV commercials in a two- or three-day time frame, giving the medium the immediacy of network TV.

Like most other media, syndicators have also embraced the concept of total marketing communications and have created a host of new platform opportunities for their shows that extend them beyond the local TV stations that air their programs. Among the chief examples cited during Syndication Day were: branded program deals such as "Oprah" and Pontiac, "Extra" and Revlon and AOL, "Family Feud" and Smuckers and Pizza Hut; as well as "The Insider" and T-Mobile.