• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, January 31, 2020

Three more major broadcast groups have joined the TV Interface Practices Initiative (TIP), the consortium formed to promote open interfaces to streamline local broadcast TV advertising transactions.

The new members are E.W. Scripps, Fox Television Stations and Graham Media Group. Collectively, these groups operate 95 local broadcast stations across 65 markets, bringing the full TIP consortium’s reach to more than 740 local stations.

Existing members include Gray Television, Hearst Television, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations and Telemundo, Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and TEGNA Inc.

TIP, which is supported by the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), has already supported several advertising system providers in deploying TIP interfaces, and more than a dozen providers are supporting deployment of TIP’s Logtimes interface, according to an update sent out by TVB.

Interfaces deployments have enabled providers’ client broadcasters to provide next-day delivery reporting to agencies, reduce time spent reconciling invoices, and correct scheduling of commercial units before they air, the initiative reports.

Early in 2019, the consortium launched the TIP code repository for vendors to co-develop APIs that reflect the TIP framework. (That and other information on the initiative is detailed at tvb.org/TIP.)  

The TIP Initiative has outlined 2020 goals, which have been  confirmed by the Trading Partner Forum, a group of 40 standards-supporting broadcasters and media and advertising agencies.

The goals include continuing to provide updates, documentation and testing support for widespread deployment of TIP’s Logtimes interface; supporting pilots of additional interfaces; and making recommendations for how local video, OTT and addressable can be further incorporated in the TIP standards.

TEGNA CTO Kurt Rao said the broadcaster plans to make its Logtimes feed available to more than a thousand agencies it does business with, and on-board any agency that’s ready to participate in 2020.

“The industry is nearing a tipping point regarding next-day Logtimes use,” Rao said.