New York -- Spot cable put its best foot forward last week,as cable ad executives told agency buyers that technology advances should reach 30 marketsby year-end.
During the New York leg of the National Spot CableForum's seven-market October tour, Ken Little, vice president of National CableCommunications' interconnect division, touted the benefits of digital ad insertionand electronic data interface.
Little said EDI is a fact of life in Chicago and Detroit.He expects 50 markets to adopt EDI by mid-1999, and every market to do so by the end ofnext year.
The National Spot Cable Forum -- a joint presentation bythe Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau and spot-cable rep firms NCC and Cable NetworksInc. -- was expected to reach a total of 1,300 advertising-agency buyers by its conclusionhere last Wednesday and in Detroit the following day. About 240 buyers were estimated tohave attended here, along with 120 in Detroit.
All told, the road show, which used the theme line,"Spot Cable -- Reach Your World," scheduled seven stops in major spot marketsthis month.
Little told the agency executives that interconnects andMSOs' market-consolidation trend have enabled NCC to place one tape and get oneinvoice, as well as to have a consistent traffic-and-billing process, with rapidcomputer-to-computer transfer of buy information and post-buy reconciliation data.
Pretaped testimonials by spot buyers from GreyEntertainment, TN Media Inc. and Campbell-Ewald (which buys for General MotorsCorp.'s Chevrolet division) supported the presenters' boasts. All said that spotcable, once a paperwork nightmare, has become efficient and worthy of consideration intheir clients' media mixes.
