• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 17, 2023

The good news is MediaPost has an incredible sales team. The bad news is our editorial team doesn't always live up to it.

So when they informed me a few weeks ago that they had sold a special one-month "MediaPost Live At The Newfronts" newsletter, I was at once thrilled that a sponsor wanted to commit to that much of our coverage, but also confused about how we were going to deliver on a commitment to produce 20 days of "live" newsletters for an event that lasts only four days -- May 1 to 4, according to the official IAB agenda.

Now I know the newfronts actually run longer than that, depending on how you define what a newfront actually is. And based on my definition, it's part of a much broader annual advertising pitch process that begins with the upfronts, and has all sorts of other fronts -- "equityfronts," "podcastfronts," "healthfronts," and at least one Outfront, so there's theoretically lots of content to draw from, just not 20 days of live newfront events coverage.

The solution was to make it three distinctly titled newsletters covering the periods leading up to, during and after the newfronts with the most relevant content we can put together.

As I outlined in my "RTBlog" post this morning, I'm personally going to use it as an opportunity to tell some of the best stories I can that relate explicitly to the newfronts, including what they are, how they came to be, what the marketplace significance of them is, and some other things that are not so explicitly related, but provide some important context for the newfront marketplace.

And we're going to package that together with some of the best news stories and columns written by myself and my colleagues Wayne Friedman, Karlene Lukovitz, Adam Buckman and others.

Much of what I plan to write will be thumbsuckers explaining the history of things like the upfronts -- both as events and as deal-making marketplace -- advertising currencies, negotiations, terms and conditions, both new and old.

Some of this coverage may show up in other places on MediaPost. And some of the content from other places on MediaPost may show up in these newsletters too, because that's how we roll.

If you have any questions about how and why we are publishing this/these newsletters, or if you have something you'd like to contribute, let me know at joe@mediapost.com.