• by dave.b , Max Kalehoff , May 11, 2007

A very smart friend who transitioned from cutting-edge interactive strategy consulting at a prestigious New York firm to general marketing and media strategy at a mega health-care and consumer package company called to see if I’d be available for a drink while he’s in New York for the television upfronts. Of course I was interested in seeing my friend, but I was also increasingly curious about the upfront circus amidst our evolving and fluid media landscape.

First, an important disclosure: I’m not a television buyer or seller, though I’ve worked closely with many. That said, I don’t understand the energy and resources that still go into upfront sales pitches and negotiations, especially when shows and lineups increasingly change or cancel before their intended run. I asked my friend his rationale and he responded: “Yeah, the upfronts are becoming more obsolete every year.” So I asked why people still attend them, and he said: “I don’t really know. The whole model is changing, though.”

Very true, said John Consoli in Adweek recently: “This year’s television upfront buying negotiations could turn into the most confusing, difficult and drawn out ever, said media buyers and network sales executives. Just one week before the broadcast networks make their presentations for the 2007-08 season, virtually everything is in a state of flux, including negotiating currency and how much money each client plans to spend across all television.”

All the hype and optimism from execs on all sides is a twisted scenario when you think about what all the volatility comes down to: splintered and shrinking audiences, less predictability and less effectiveness -- all for the same or more money. But while the existing television model is being challenged, we’re also witnessing the disruption and opportunity of digital media work its way into the process.

Said Jack Feuer this week in Variety: “Media buyers and sellers are calling it ‘the wheel.’ It’s the idea that you don’t just buy television anymore, especially network television. What you do, instead, is use the network as the hub of a wheel. Then digital and other emerging platform opportunities become the ‘spokes.’…That’s a real difference from 2006’s upfront discussions, in which the nets were digital dabblers, offering online and other digital components as add-ons, mostly on an ad hoc basis.”

Considering the critical mass that television represents, and myriad connected digital media opportunities propagating, the wheel framework makes sense. Television holds tremendous equity and often leads communications strategy and dollars, so there’s a huge opportunity to leverage that foundation.

But what doesn’t make sense in this evolving model is the upfront. Wheels tend to spin round and round, turn and change directions, and sometimes stop and go in reverse. And that dynamic requires a buying and planning platform very different from the 1950s broadcast upfont, which is inherently a massive, slow-moving and time-stamped infrastructure. What’s needed is a model that is nimble, flexible and continuous -- a platform to achieve efficiency and synergies across media, and tied directly to other marketing touch points and customer databases.

Considering the massive advertising stake that is television and the Madison Avenue institution, I wonder: Will the erosion of the upfronts and the intertwined explosion of digital truly prompt a next generation in media buying and selling? Could it lead to real innovation or revolution?

What do you think?