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Road Trip: NCC Seeks to Sway Media Shops

Maybe the senior executives for spot cable company National Cable Communications won't be the next dreamy boy band, but they will try to perform the best they can on a ten-city road show geared to convince media buyers that cable spots deserve more money.

Starting this week and throughout the next few months, the executive team - CEO Tom Olson, COO Greg Schaefer and EVP of sales Andrew Ward - -will take to the road, targeting both clients and ad agencies they want on board.

Since the television audience for cable is growing, so should every media buyer's advertising budget for spot cable, said Marc Bodner, NCC's VP of marketing and communications.

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Ad-supported cable's audience surpassed the four largest broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) combined by more than 1.3 million homes and 2 share points during the February sweeps, according to a Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau's analysis of Nielsen Media Research data. And, last year, ad-supported cable topped the combined prime-time viewership of the seven broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB, UPN and PAX) by an average of 1 million homes, 1.2 rating points and 1.7 share points.

Despite these gains, NCC executives have to work to change the ingrained behavior of ad buyers as well as erase the past negative perceptions of spot cable advertising. Spot cable has been seen as lacking in ratings, cumbersome to buy and downright inefficient, Bodner said.

At a panel addressing television advertising last week, Jon Mandel, co-managing director and chief negotiating officer for MediaCom, explained that media buyers are "in the business of buying tomorrow's programming on yesterday's numbers." So even though cable's ratings have improved, ad buyers rely on old numbers.

And, according to Mandel, buying one spot on broadcast in New York will give him a higher rating than all cable spots combined.

During the road show, NCC executives hope to change this perception and plan to show how spot cable is easier to buy. Spot cable ads grew 24% last year and are expected to increase 19% this year. And cable interconnects should total 75 out of the top 100 markets by the end of this year, Bodner said.

Jack Myers, chief economist for the Myers Report, says that NCC has indeed helped put spot cable on the same playing field as broadcast advertising. "So the medium itself, really just in the past two years, has gotten itself to where it's comparing apples to apples," Myers said. "I think it's important for the industry to be going out now and telling its story."

THE NEXT QUESTION:

*Even though the ratings data looks good nationally, can NCC overcome the lack of local ratings and agency issues with proof of performance?

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Road Trip: NCC Seeks to Sway Media Shops

Cable World, April 28, 2003

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