DOCUMENT RESUME ED 362 923 CS 508 357 TITLE Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (76th, Kansas City, Missouri, August 11-14, 1993). Part XI: Adv,rtising. INSTITUTION Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. PUB DATE Aug 93 NOTE 331p.; For other sections of these proceedings, see CS 508 347-362. For 1992 proceedings, see ED 349 608-623. Illustrations in the Robinson paper may not reproduce clearly. PUB TYPE Collected Works Conference Proceedings (021) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC14 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Advertising; Content Analysis; Information Sources; Marketing; *Mass Media Role; Media Research; Recall (Psychology); Television IDENTIFIERS *Advertising Effectiveness; *Advertising Industry; Barter; Consumer Information; Consumers; Media Campaigns ABSTRACT The Advertising section of this collection of conference presentations contains the following 12 papers: "How Leading Advertising Agencies Perceive and Use Barter Syndication: A Pilot Study" (Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted); "Three Giants--Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, William Bernbach: An Exploration of the Impact of the Founders' Written Communications on the Destinies of Their Advertising Agencies" (Leonard L. Bartlett); "The Effect of Serial Position on TV Advertisement Recall: Evidence from Two Years of Super Bowl Advertising Data" (Taeyong Kim and Xinshu Zhao); "A New Conception of Deceptiveness" (Ivan L. Preston); "The Role of Comparative Information in Political Advertising Evaluations and Candidate Evaluations" (Bruce E. Pinkleton); "California's Anti-Smoking Media Campaign: The History and Effectiveness of an Advertising War on the Tobacco Industry" (W. Robert Nowell III); "Hispanic-American Consumer Behavior: A Marketing Update" (Betty Parker); "Corporate America: Adapting to the African-American Consumer Market" (Velma A. Robinson); "The Baddies of Advertising: An Analysis of the Negative in Advertising Criticism" (Sandra E. Moriarty); "A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Environmentally Related Advertisements in Consumer Magazines from 1966 through 1991" (Marni J. Finkelstein and others); "The Relative Constancy Hypothesis, Structural Pluralism and National Advertising Expenditures" (David Pearce Demers); and "Product Information Strategies of American and Japanese Television Advertisements" (Carolyn A. Lin and Michael B. Salwen). (NH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION IN JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION (76TH, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, AUGUST 11-14, 1993). PART XI : ADVERTISING. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY U.S DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION Office of Educational Research anti Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES iNFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) sL.This document has peen reproduced as Ireceived from the person or organization Originating it I Mince changes have been made lc, improve 70 THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES reproduction duality INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." Points of view of opinions stated in this docu ment dO not necessarily represent othrial OE RI position of policy 2 Bt ST COPY MILANI How Leading Advertising Agencies Perceive and Use Barter Syndication: A Pilot Study by Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted AEJMC Advertising Division: Special Topics *Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115 Phone number: (815)7537006 3 Traditionally, program license fees collected on a market by market basis were the only major revenue source for television syndicators. Though existing since the early days of television syndication, barter advertising practices never gained respectability in the advertising community and did not become an important revenue source for syndicators until the 1980s. During the last ten years, is,arter syndication has generated almost 30 times gross revenues for the television syndicators. While the tremepdous growth of barter syndication suggests that this medium has become a viable national television advertising alternuive, very few national advertisers consider it a primary vehicle in their media buying portfolios and those actually using it still have strong reservations about the medium of syndicated television. Such skepticism can be traced largely to the lack of understanding of the nature of the syndication industry by the advertising community and to the dearth of knowledge by tbe syndicators on how the medium is currently being perceived and used by the advertisers (Haley, 1989; Mahoney, 1992; Golastein, 1992). Barter syndication can be defined as the business where local commercial television stations and syndicators trade advertising time or advertising time and a cash license fee for programming. Basically, television stations may acquire a syndicated program with some commercial messages already inserted and agree to run these national commercials in return for a reduction or total waiver of the program license fee. The syndicator makes its money from the sale of commercials to national advertisers. In contrast to its weekly delivery of a close-to 30 % intional television audience share availabls to advertisers, barter syndication only commands about 4 percent of the total U.S. television media expenditures (NTI Pocketpieces, 1989). Apparently television syndicators have done a good job in redirecting advertisers' attention to this national media alternative by improvinl the programming quality, generating a larger national audience, offering competitive prices, and having access to important broadcast tine slots. Nevertheless, syndicators need to provide a better media planning and buying environment to sustain the advertiser's interest in the medium and to develop a long-term working relationship that will benefit both parties. Since there has been very limited research conducted in the field of barter syndication, the present study will briefly examine the practices of barter syndication and focus on investigating the perceptions and uses of barter syndication by the leading advertising agencies. The goal is to paint a picture of the current status of barter syndication, determine how and why it is used by the advertising community, and hopefully, improve the understanding of this advertising medium by both the huyers and the sellers. 1 4 Previous Research Previous research in the area of barter syndication is very limited. Most of the studies have been in a °short industry report" format and conducted mainly by the advertising trade journals such as Adweek, Marketing & Media Decisions, Advertising Age, and Broadcasting. The focus of these reports was mostly on the role of barter syndication in the media planning process from an advertiser's perspective (Paskowski and Silver, 1987; Handese, 1989; Haley, 1989; Brown, 1992). While there have been several studies on the general industry practices of television syndication (Chan-Olmsted, 1990; Cooper, 1992; Soosten, 1993), no attempt has been made to examine specifically the current use and perception of barter syndication by the advertising community. In terms of investigating the practices of barter from the local stations' viewpoint, a survey on barter programming of independent stations shows that almost half of the responding stations' daily program schedule consisted of more than 25 % barter programming. Stations in smaller markets relied even more heavily on barter syndication. Although a majority of respondents agreed that barter improves their stations' profitability, many expressed the fear that syndicators would continue to seek more local advertising inventory and devalue stations' national spot advertising rates with their barter sales (Stefanidis, 1991). Sone trade journal reports and private industry research have made comparisons of the criteria used by media planners when choosing between network TV and barter syndication (Rubin, 1986; Handese, 1989; Mahoney, 1992; Media Dynamics, Inc. 1992). Generally, syndicated TV spots are sold 15-35 % ias than the network spots on a cost-per-thousand (CPH) basis with the exceptions of the top-ranked programs which command CPNs comparable to those of network TV. In terns of program genre, game shows, magazine entries, sitcoms and talk shows seem to be the trend for syndicated TV, different from the networks' drama and sitcom approach.According to these industry reports, syndicated TV, while attracts mostly adult women and kids, has a much more limited demographic appeal than the network TV. More extensive literature exists on the media planning and buying practices of various television media, such as the use of cable television by leading advertisers and agencies (Katz and Lancaster, 1989) and the evaluation factors of media plans for different media (Lancaster, Kreshel, and Harris, 1986; Leckenby and Boyd, 1985). Again, no attempt has been made to examine the media planning and buying practices of barter syndication. 2 5 Current State,of Barter Syndication While syndicators have long discovered the revenue benefit of withholding sone advertising ninutes per show and the advantage of cost reduction through increased sales of barter advertising spots, stations did not jump onto the barter bandwagon until the mid-1980s. Initially, barter arrangement is attractive to stations only for unproven