-: My name is Paul Brennan, and I'm the Senior Vice President
here at Sony Pictures Television,
and our team, we work to negotiate and sell commercial time
within Sony's portfolio of syndicated programs
that you might know, such as The Goldbergs,
The Dr. Oz Show, Seinfeld, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy.
We work to sell the national commercial time
within those shows.
I carry an active list
with all of our national agencies here in the city,
interfacing with the buying community,
but also, my specialty is,
I oversee the full sales process
of two cable networks that we represent,
one being RFD-TV, and a second being FamilyNet.
The way syndication works is that in each show,
you'll see both national and local ads.
We sell the national ads,
which are always typically
a position that we'll call 1-A,
which is the first commercial that you'd see,
or maybe the first pod, that is,
and you can usually tell the national
versus the local spots,
so in a show like Dr. Oz, you might see
a company like Merck, or AstraZeneca,
or Campbell's soup, or something like that,
and those would be the ads that we sell from our team.
A lot of that starts really well in advance
as far as research.
A show like The Goldbergs, for example.
That's a show we just premiered a couple of weeks ago.
But I'll say, eight months ago,
I was researching clients
who might fit well in a show like that,
such as a Hershey's, or such as a Geico,
or different things that we think would fit in there.
I think it's understanding first and foremost
who would want to be in a show that's all about families
and that's family-friendly and safe.
Then it's going to those accounts and pitching the show,
and talking about it,
and seeing what their temperature is for that,
and then certainly,
having them submit a budget to that show,
which they would then say,
"Okay. I want to commit X amount of dollars to it."
Then, it's up to us to negotiate that price,
and also work with them to understand
where in the show they're going to be,
and where that show is going to run,
because again, it's syndication,
so The Goldbergs will be on one channel here in New York
but a different channel in Boston,
and a different channel in Dallas, Chicago, LA.
It's really an education,
and it takes a while, quite honestly.
We're going to that actual client at the client location,
because they are the owner of those brands,
and really educating them
on what the property is that we're selling
and why it could help them to sell more movie tickets,
or more trucks, or more...
Whatever their business is,
we're trying to help them increase their bottom line,
so that's an important meeting to have,
but also, at the agencies, the buying agencies,
that's really where all the transactional business comes in,
so really, for us, it's twofold.
We want to make sure we have that meeting at said client's,
and then also be at that agency,
because then, the agency and the client will speak,
and they'll understand, "Okay, here's a show
that Sony sells, Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy,
and we want to be in that show because it's gonna help us."
When they can agree upon that,
that really helps us to get that deal done.