• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, January 7, 2009

Although it was probably unintentional, the executive who oversees Fox gave an endorsement Wednesday for the Television Bureau of Advertising's efforts to revolutionize the local broadcast business via an electronic buying and selling system. Tony Vinciquerra, president-CEO of the Fox Networks Group, said advertisers continue to prefer networks vis-à-vis local stations because they are so much easier to buy.

When negotiating with Fox or a sister News Corp. cable channel, an agency can work with a single point of contact to swiftly purchase national spots. Compare that to a multi-station buy, Vinciquerra said, where the process involves a slew of sellers.

"If you tried to buy a spot on "American Idol" or "House" on every one of the 205 Fox-affiliated stations around the country, it's probably 40 buyers, 75 back-office people, 100 sellers," he said. "When the invoices come in, another 50 people to check the invoices for discrepancies, makegoods, etc. It is just really difficult to buy local television today."

Speaking at an investor event, Vinciquerra said the local-buying problems "can be fixed." The effort and time must be spent by television stations "to figure out how to create electronic-data interfaces," he says, "so you don't have all this complexity to buy local businesses."

Executives at TVB, the trade group for station operators, could not agree more. For several years now, it has been developing an e-business platform for transactions. Known as ePort and still in its early stages, the system is aimed at automating all stages of a buy, from proposal to invoice.

So far, ePort has been employed by some 700 stations, mostly just for the order stage. But its full functionality is in place, and TVB president Chris Rohrs recently said that "2009 is going to be a pivotal year" to determine whether stations are committed to using the system--and e-business at-large--to address the type of frustrations that Vinciquerra said agencies have expressed to him.

Vinciquerra emphasized how much red tape is involved in local broadcast buying as he laid out a scenario in which it could be less expensive to buy a national ad on "Idol" than a local spot in the top-20 markets. The national buy may cost 20% more, he said, but "with all the back-office savings, it's probably a wash. So why not buy the rest of the country?"

Vinciquerra oversees the Fox network along with all News Corp. cable outlets, save Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network.