TIP Initiative

Executives from NBCUniversal Local (Frank Comerford, above), Tegna, Sinclair and Hearst told a TVNewsCheck webinar they’re bedeviled by persistent gaps in the available buying/selling pipeline, which have bogged down the transaction process and added to their expenses. Those woes are leading some broadcasters to bring more of their automated functions in house.

TV salespeople have been working from home since March, but the technology necessary for the entire sales workflow to be cloud-based is still developing. Both WideOrbit and Imagine Communications are transitioning existing products to the cloud and developing new cloud-based software.

More leading local broadcasters join the advertising consortium, which now includes groups representing more than 740 stations.

Per-transaction fees and resistance by walled gardens are hampering the development of tools to streamline the complicated world of buying and selling spot TV advertising.

TIP Initiative, an industry work group promoting open interfaces to streamline advertising transactions for local TV broadcasters and their media agency partners, today released a new white paper highlighting results from […]

Developers of the software or platforms that make automated spot sales possible will be demanding a small percentage of the business they handle, possibly up to 1.5%. With broadcasters’ ringing up several billion in national spot sales each year, the automation fees could quickly run into tens of millions of dollars.

The recipients of TVNewsCheck’s inaugural Women in Technology Futurist Awards — the TVB’s Abby Auerbach and LG and ATSC’s Madeleine Noland — epitomize the quality of taking a long-range view of where the television industry should be moving and figuring out how to get it there.