Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1961)

Once an adman's pipedream, "centralized" billing for spot BROADCAST BILLING CO. TV FIRST— BBC will concentrate on tv (later radio) with system designed around existing spot forms. Chrm. Laury Botthof (seated), George W. Schiele, sales v.p. (I) and Richard I. Golden, operations v.p. (r) BROADCAST CLEARING HOUSE RADIO FIRST— BCH has made alliance with Bank o America to handle spot data processing and payments BCH's John Palmer, pres. (I) and Lee Mehlig con centrate on radio spot, later, adding tv data that spot paperwork is increased "substantially" by the growth of multi-agency spot accounts. • A large agency estimates that it spends about 865.000 each year in timebuyer, clerical and other salaries just to clear up discrepancies between spot orders and spot billing, primarily due to changes in earned radio/tv spot rates. • This problem isn't unique to agencies. Stations estimate that they spend four executive and nine clerical man-hours each month clearing and adjusting discrepancies on outstanding billing. • The price of paperwork delays can be measured in terms of spot dollars that have become clogged in payment channels. Projecting station estimates of percentages of current billing that is outstanding, CMB estimates that at least $4 million in spot radio t\ revenue is "past due" each month by 90 days or more, and over 18 million is behind payment by 60 • lavs or more. • Errors, which must be resolved later, can creep all too easily into the present paper-heavy systems of spot buying. It takes no less than eight documents to process a spot buy in 26 tv: contract, time order, estimate, client invoice, station invoice, affidavit of performance, station voucher, adjusted invoice to client. • Station reps are also on permanent safari through the paper jungle, usually at a cost of extra salaries and delays in payment. Special departments for handling data on discount rates earned by multi-product accounts have been set up by seven out of every 10 reps responding to CMB, with an average of four people (and as many as 10, in 20% of cases) assigned to such paperwork. • Agencies are fully aware that the paperwork problem must be solved and often indicate just how it might be done. "Although stations and reps do not agree, there should be some way to combine the biggest sources of paperwork into one continuity-availability sheet, confirmation and order or contract," the media director of one of Madison Ave.'s largest agencies told CMB. Another media executive, whose Park Ave. agency is in the "top 20" in broadcast billing, suggested that stations and reps could cut back on paperwork by "adhering more closely to confirmed orders and improving their procedures to provide us with moii accurate information more quickly.' That familiar plea, for greater aq curacyr and speed, is really the storr center of the hurricane of papej which has long bedeviled spot media As agency overhead has inched steaC ily upward to put a neat prof squeeze on the handling of spot a« counts, there's been a greater outc for faster and better communicatio between buyer and seller in spot Modern data-processing techno gy, spurred in many cases by increasing complexity of defer needs and weapons systems, has on recently caught up to the proble This, in turn, has created a n vision of "automated" agency pr tices in which admen and rep exei tives can spend more time on creative and marketing aspects spot radio /tv and less on its boi keeping headaches. It will be none too soon, the exe tives of the new firms now propos new systems of centralized billi freely admit. "Spot radio tv is ting so complex, so hard to buy, tl it is making it increasingly diffk for advertisers and agencies to der maximum efficiency from spot bi t SPONSOR 16 OCTOBER Vi I