Strategic

• Politicals
• Bad Book
• Rotator Management in traffic and Maxagrid

Politicals

All soft money raised by both political parties will have to be spent prior to the general election this November. Be prepared for added demand on your stations by adjusting pending inputs to the program and review the process for setting up a political rate class.

• Examine all annual and bulk contracts to identify lowest unit rates. Print rate cards for every week within the political window using the lowest priced rate class. Use this information along with existing contracts and other bulk rates to develop the station’s floor rates. These floor rates will become the political rate card.
• Use floor rates to build a new rate class called Political. Lock the rates so they don’t float with demand. Print your political rate card in grid format and put it in a political folder to show that no orders taken during the political window, having blended rates, were calculated below these.
• Now use the floor rates to set base rates on all dayparts of all rate classes. This way, your rates will never fall below these even if you change seasonal indicators. Be sure that base rates are set the same on every rate class. Every new rate class built from that point forward will carry with it the appropriate base rates.
• Grid forecasts, applicable to the schedule, must accompany all orders turned in during the political window. This is to backup actual rates by day and daypart when an order is written at average rate. To pull a grid forecast go to Flighted Weeks under Forecast Rates.
• After the political window, remove base rates from all rate classes.

PENDING BUSINESS DRIVES RATES

Look at the last political window and calculate units that were sold at political rates. Enter in pending at the appropriate dollar amount and appropriate # of units. Keep a record of units and dollar amount. As political window draws near and you begin putting in regular pending business (60-90 days out) you need to put in 2 sets of pending business so as to keep track of the political pending that is still to be placed.

Note: The definition of average unit rate for political is subject to interpretation. Maxagrid assumes no responsibility for ultimate determination of political rates used by stations or rates that are placed on broadcast orders. This memo is made available as an application support bulletin only.

If you have questions regarding the set up of political rates classes in your system, please call our help desk at 972-241-2110.

Bad Book

Chances are that your budget goals are not going to be lowered in light of dropping audience figures…nor should they be! Instead, take these measures:

1. When talking to direct clients, reinforce the fact that they have been enjoying success on your station. The ratings are at least a month old by the time they’re released; if the client hasn’t seen a drop in response for his advertising, what difference should the new ratings make? The answer is “none.”
2. If the drop in audience is real, what does programming/management plan to do to turn it around? Market these measures to clients: things are being done to increase audience levels, they’ve had success on your station, continue to enjoy successful campaigns, and there’s no reason to jump ship now.
3. Commodity business (agency) will take a hit, depending on the dynamics of your audience drop. To salvage some of it, set up a discounted rate class with these terms and conditions: a) The rate class contains a few broad dayparts only, like M-Sun 6a-Mn, M-F 6a-Mn, Weekend 6a-Mn; selecting smaller dayparts requires the use of your standard rate class. b) Limit the number of weeks into the future that can be purchased at discount. The rate class is not available past the release of the next ratings book. c) Be sure to watch the amount of inventory being sold at discount. You may use the capacity eliminate level to shut down this rate class whenever station sellout reaches x%.
4. To replace agency business you cannot afford to accommodate, create an aggressive new business plan targeting direct accounts. For instance, how can you double your direct business within the next 30 days?
5. Watch pending business very closely to better understand your amount of committed inventory. This is business that has at least an 85% or better chance of closing. You should be updating pending business in your system weekly for this month, next month and the following month.
6. How are competitors responding? Hopefully, if they increased audience, they’ve also increased rates to prevent sellout in a situation of heightened demand. Before this increase in audience, did the competition sell out? In this case, hold your rate and reinforce the station value per the suggestions above. If the competition is not raising rates or adding units, they risk early sellout, especially this time of year (April/May). Again, the best strategy is to hold your rate; as a result, you’ll have avails for advertisers who need to get on the air when the competition can’t clear them.
7. Don’t let your competitors manage the perceived value of your station. If they’ve been in an account of yours, talking about your audience drop, here’s what to say:
   • “Interesting that the other station is so busy talking about us…”
   • Review why the client bought your station in the first place.
   • Discuss the differentiation of your station; what makes it stand out as desirable for the advertiser? Discuss the perceived value/price/return on investment relationship.
   • If the client was on the air during the ratings period, reiterate that he hadn’t seen any drop in response. Why pull advertising that’s working? If the client has an earned rate for long-term business, discuss the benefits of sticking with the station through this period…after going through this “blip on the radar screen,” the station will be stronger and the client won’t see a rate increase.

Rotator Management in traffic and Maxagrid

Many managers use rotators as a way to lower cost per points or average rates on orders. These rotators are written up to run 6A-12M Mon-Sun as the ratings credit comes from this daypart. However, the real intention is to sell out prime inventory and therefore have the rotators forced into the fringe areas of the station. Until the prime dayparts reach sellout, the traffic systems will allow the rotators to sit in prime dayparts and take up available space. This circumstance in traffic causes misreads of actual available inventory counts in prime unless the inventory report is restricted through the use of priority filters when calling up the report. If priority filters are used to negate the display or counting of rotator spots, then they must be considered inside Maxagrid for prevention of sellout in the fringe areas of the stations.

Solution:
How to manipulate the Maxagrid software and overcome rotator interference in management of inventory.

Step 1: Reset weeks 1-15 in the default traffic model to 0 values. This will make sure that correct availability is displayed when dayparts are empty in traffic due to filtering out rotators from reports. Some dayparts are excluded if no inventory is sold within the range of priorities used for the report.

Step 2: A count of rotators can be made using printed traffic reports and spots entered into bulk pendings for the calendar period. Make sure that the dollar value on the spots is $0 so that regular pending dollars can be considered during revenue projection exercise in system. If these rotator spots are entered into bulk pending with dollars values then the revenue projection will give a false read on revenue pacing to budgets. Entry of these rotators in Maxagrid will provide early warning as to when the fringe areas of the station might be sold out and use of rotators must be terminated.

The best advice for any manager struggling with the disruption of rotator packaging in scheduled is to minimize the use of rotators as much as possible. This practice creates problems for traffic systems in reporting correct sellout conditions and plays havoc with yield management as well.