[BC] Streaming spots

[Rich Wood]

------ At 10:56 AM 9/17/2008, Kevin Trueblood wrote: -------

>When I started streaming at my previous group, I contacted a rather 
>promenant attorney to clarify the whole AFTRA issue.  His words were 
>that the whole AFTRA case was a big ballyhoo several years ago that 
>is not as big of a deal today.  He went on to say that most agency 
>spots are cleared for streaming without issue but there are some 
>that aren't.  He said that it's the responsibility of the ad agency 
>to flag those spots to stations so they can block them as 
>necessary.  If a spot were to run that wasn't supposed to the 
>responsibility falls on the agency.  If they didn't notify us it 
>wasn't cleared for streaming, they don't have much of a case.

That makes it more of a nightmare. Instead of just cutting all spots 
you'd then have to set up a system that would have to remove a single 
spot from a cluster. Unless you do the replacement in-house and you 
have a digital system that allows each cut to be coded.to trip a 
closure to run a cover spot a third party replacement service would 
have no way of knowing what to cut.. I'm sure it can be done 
in-house. At Buckley's WDRC, Hartford, we had a few satellite 
stations that were fed different spots, promos and IDs from WDRC. It 
required multiple systems.

Yes, the station won't be billed by AFTRA. The agency will be even if 
the station runs it by mistake.

>Mind you, this is in a smaller market.  Not sure how that would work 
>if you've got AFTRA members in house.  I can't think of one major 
>market station I've streamed that doesn't block ads.

It's not worth the risk. If you cost the agency money you risk 
damaging the relationship. In major markets the personalities are 
paid astronomically more than the AFTRA scale plus the fee, so it 
might not be an issue if the spot is cut by station talent. At most 
major market stations the talent already gets a fee for all spots run 
in their shows. Even more if it's a live read.

>The downside to that is Arbitron requires a 100% simulcast, spots 
>included, to get credit for streaming online.

Absolutely. I'm sure many stations would add the streaming audience 
to the station's numbers. It would be cheating the advertiser because 
their spots were never heard by the streaming listeners. That's also 
the reason HD-2 and HD-3 have to be encoded separately to be able to 
strip out the 8 listeners that might be credited to the analog. This 
is in PPM markets. In diary markets Arbitron is likely to report 
subchannel listening in with the analog. The receivers display the 
analog call letters. What this does is call the overall numbers into 
question. Most agencies I know would take advantage of that and 
demand lower rates because you can't strip out that one HD-2 listener 
who may have a diary and report listening to the analog when, in 
fact, they never heard the spots.

That's the major reason I believe stations should be able to identify 
each channel separately as though they were an independent station. 
Remember that diaries are often filled out at a single sitting when 
they're scheduled to be mailed back. The station that sticks in their 
mind will get the credit.

Rich

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