• by Wayne Friedman , December 22, 2005

The Syndicated Network Television Association will abandon its annual spring "SNTA Syndication Day" advertising sales conference in 2006, according to executives.

The move is the second by a major TV ad trade association to abandon a single, big national conference. Over the past several years, the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau has also scrapped its national conference in favor of a series of more intimate one-on-one meetings with agencies and clients. The CAB's local cable advertising sales conference has become its big event.

"The SNTA members decided it would be more productive to hold meetings at the media agencies during the 2006 pre-upfront period, in place of a Syndication Day conference," stated Mitch Burg, president of the SNTA. "This change will allow for more of the dynamic dialogue that has made syndicated television the place where the best ideas in communications planning are executed."

The annual conference included individual meetings between program syndicators and agencies in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago--with its biggest effort being in New York. Media agency and syndication executives had said these meetings were productive.

The three-year-old SNTA conference essentially replaced similar large-scale meetings that media agencies had with program syndicators at the National Association of Television Program Executives conferences, which took place in recent years in Las Vegas and New Orleans.

Media agency executives have said they like the SNTA format because the meetings took place in New York City, where a majority of media agencies are located. Now, according to one executive, representatives from each syndicator will make a presentation at individual media agencies, along with SNTA staffers. Specific details are yet to be worked out. Messages left at SNTA's offices were not returned by press time.