Advertisers vs Broadcasters: The day of nothing?

MUMBAI: Everyone and everybody that indiantelevision.com journalists got in touch with today to get an update on the advertisers vs broadcasters faceoff had one word to say: "Nothing."

So we decided to label it as the day of nothing.

But after probing deeper, we got to know that both sides, the AAAI and ISA, and broadcasters have as collectives individually agreed upon the tradeoffs each one is willing partake of. And at a very high level (read a select group of stakeholders), representatives of all sides have broadly reached an agreement too. "Some of the the AAAI, ISA and the broadcaster members have agreed on certain points. However not everybody has not agreed. Now unless, they all buy into this proposed agreement, the agreement is not really an agreement," says a media observer close to the developments.

Did any official conversations take place between them today? "None really," says a really very senior advertising professional. ?Talks happened but on an informal level. We are all friends, after all."

Observers, going by historical precedent, expect some announcement to come tomorrow late Friday evening. "Over the past two months, major announcements have been made on weekends. It was last weekend when broadcasters announced that they were moving to monthly ratings, before that the unsubscribing announcements happened on Friday and Saturday. There is a pattern to this," says one of them. "It would be opportune for them to announce that they have all reached common ground."

Reports are that the IBF board is meeting tomorrow, but sources close to the IBF say that the meeting is not related to the monthly ratings and the proposals made by advertisers and agencies. Whether this source is bluffing or not will only become clearer by late tomorrow evening.