U. S. Radio (Jan-Dec 1961)

I [lie da) when the second commercial radio station took to the air, the broadcast industry has been beset by a nagging, relentless barb— the spot paper jungle. But ihcre's new hope for radio's escape from this undergrowthStrewn across the glamorous, awesome 41-year past ol broadcasting is a back-office mess created by a maze of paper work that connects to the very nerves of the industry. Entangled in this paper jungle have been broadcasting's mechanical means of survival, the day-to-day SO YOU WANT TO SURVIVE THE SPOT PAPER JUNGLE! Agencies interested and reps elated over plan to clean up spot paper work workings of the business machine: availabilities, confirmation orders, agency contracts, affidavits, makegoods, rates, commissions, billing. Rooted in causes as complex as the results, paper confusion has chiefly been abetted by an innate absence of standardization. Stations, representatives and agencies have differed widely in paper procedures used to transact business with one another. So, too, have each of the three groups differed within them selves as to the methods of interchange with the others. Although there have been attempts, some fruitful, to standardize forms along certain channels of communications, the elimination of waste has been fragmentary, however successful. And the most frictional area of standards lack has been the most fractional — national spot billing. There has never been, until as recently as last month, a private effort to put the entire broadcasting industry on a uniform system for billing. One reason: only within the past two years has electronic data processing equipment been engineered efficiently enough to assimilate and organize the vast paperwork complex. Now the long-awaited centralized, automated procedures for buying, selling and billing of national spot radio and television are just around the corner. Two firms — Broadcast Clearing House Inc. and Broadcast Billing Co., Inc. — have already announced their intentions to act as central billing agents for stations, advertising agencies and representatives. A third group is expected to announce its plans shortly. The men behind the rash of new firms have swathed a path through the jungle of prevailing procedures in order to find out what is wrong and how it can become right. What they have discovered is perhaps all too familiar to the beleaguered station representative who finds himself stranded as both mediator and salesman between the agency and station. Both agency and station are aware of their own peculiar problems in the melee, but perhaps neither has a full understanding of what goes on in the other shop. Why is there a jungle? And what hazards lurk in it? Here is what happens, step by step, in the ordering and billing of national spot radio and television: T he advertising agency requests station availabilities from the representative for a projected cam 32 U. S. RADIO/ September 1961