Media Buying Briefing: How the upfront has changed over the last 30 years

As the cable reporter for now-defunct Mediaweek from 1993 until 1998 when I became an editor, I learned about the TV ad marketplace down to a level of granularity I had no idea existed. It’s when I first heard the term “upfront” used in a way that had nothing to do with where I stood at a concert or in line.

In those days, hardly anyone knew what the Internet was, four broadcast networks dominated the upfront marketplace, and syndication (remember that?) and basic cable networks scratched out revenue totals that barely added to half a billion dollars — less than Google generates in less than two weeks today.

There was no programmatic selling — it was all about relationships between the ad sales chiefs and their teams, and the titans of the media agency world (when the likes of Irwin Gotlieb and Jon Mandel made or broke the business). And each of the sales teams had their own style — where the MTV Networks sales team in the late 1990s resembled a family straight out of “The Sopranos” central casting, the Turner sales team felt more akin to “Mad Men.”

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