‘‘Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

It doesn’t take someone with Better Davis’s eyes to see that her famous line in All About Eve is an apt admonition for the New Year.

After all, we’re just a few days past 2007, which we rang out with the FCC’s changes in ownership rules, and creation of the new Tribune-Local TV station super group, which now covers half of the country, and retailer disappointment over holiday spending.

While we shouldn’t hold him responsible, Father Time also managed to saddle the New Year with an unresolved television writers’ strike.

But all’s not doom and gloom. This is one of those years where we can be thankful for the boost that a presidential election and the Summer Olympics will bring to our operating margins.

We can also be confident that, despite the turbulence created by alternative media, most media buyers will still choose television for transporting the bulk of their advertising messages in the coming months.

BCFM members, who are tasked with charting a smooth course toward their companies’ financial performance objectives, will be counting on our organization to provide some of the market intelligence that will help them to find the right altitude and direction for reaching this destination.

With the BCFM board’s support and leadership, we have scheduled a number of activities and events that are designed to incorporate the latest market projections and experiences in order to deliver that information and advice. 

Improving Collections

One of our first events for the New Year is a distance learning tele-seminar from BCFM and our Broadcast Cable Credit Association (BCCA) subsidiary, Secrets Revealed—National Collections, which is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 23, at 4-5:15 p.m. ET.

Moderated by BCFM board member Michael Denson, director of credit & collections for Petry Media, this tele-seminar will share advice from experts on how to build stronger relationships with advertising agencies in order to improve the effectiveness of a station or network’s collections program.

Registered seminar participants are eligible to receive CPE credits.

Future seminars will address such topics as human resources media accounting issues, tax planning strategies and  music licensing, along with a number of other subjects identified by our members.               

Making Money in Personalized Media

The following day, Thursday, Jan. 24, we will hold BCFM’s West Coast Regional Seminar on Making Money from the Growth in Personalized Media.

Held at the ABC/Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif., the seminar will focus on the trends in mobile and personalized media, on the revenue-generating opportunities that are emerging from these developments and real stories from the people who are leveraging them for new dollars.

The event will be held from noon to 6 p.m. (including lunch and a cocktail reception). Our co-chairs for the event, Sheldon Lee, a BCFM board member and controller for Belo’s KING Seatle, and Valerie Blackburn, a former board member and market controller for CBS Radio, are putting together a great panel of experts for West Coast attendees.

Confirmed presenters already include Cory Bergman, director of digital media for KING5.com and founder and managing editor of LostRemote.com; Jim Taszarak, president of Taz Media; Carol Robinson, radio sales manager for AP Radio; Milton Stumpus, director national business development, Cox Media; and mobile video expert Izzy Abbass, a partner with Enki Strategic Advisors.  

Your World. Your Connection.

Examining new revenue opportunities will also be one of the key topics for BCFM/BCCA’s Annual Conference, which will be held May 13-15 at The Fairmont Hotel in Dallas.

Themed Your World, Your Connection, the association’s 48^th annual conference will also feature accredited (CPE) sessions in the fields of finance, accounting and auditing, credit and collections, human resources management,  IT/new media, tax, radio, cable and television.

In addition, the Media Tax Institute will again be holding its annual meeting in conjunction with our conference.

Our conference co-chairs, BCFM Board Vice-Chairman Bill Fitzsimmons, vice president accounting and financial planning & analysis for Cox Communications, and BCFM board member Trila Bumstead, executive vice president and CFO for New Northwest Broadcasters, have already been hard at work lining up sessions and presenters.

Confirmed keynoters include Jeff Henley, chairman of Oracle Corp., and Travel Channel’s popular on-air host and multi-platform media maven Samantha Brown.

The Financial Manager

BCFM/BCCA’s bimonthly member magazine, The Financial Manager (TFM), is edited by industry analyst and freelance writer Janet Stilson. Janet is aided by an editorial advisory board, which has also been busy identifying the hot topics for 2008. This year’s editorial calendar includes the following themes:

• January/February: Rules of the Game (Regulation in Transition)
• March/April: Credit & Collections/Annual Conference Preview
• May/June: Annual Conference Issue, Award Winners
• July/August: Conflicts & Ethics, Conference in Review
• September/October: Bringing Up Media Babies (New Revenue Streams)
• November/December: The Changing Workforce

Front Office

Thanks to the support of Harry Jessell and his TVNEWSDAY editorial team, you can look for BCFM’s Front Office column here at TVNEWSDAY every other Friday.

Continuing with our New Year outlook, the Jan. 18 column will take a look at some of the hot HR issues that were covered in the November/December 2007 issue of TFM.

They include tips from Ann Carlsen, founder and CEO of the executive search firm Carlsen Resources on addressing the dramatic changes that are affecting our workforce, along with advice from legal experts Nancy L. Wolf, a member of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Leventhal Senter & Lerman, and Susan Ritz, a partner in the Manhattan law firm Ritz & Clark, on avoiding sexual harassment litigation. You will also learn what to do if you are charged or victimized by an offense.

Some of the advice from 2007 that I’m using to guide the way in 2008 came from Richard O’Sullivan, principal at Change Management Solutions.

I heard Rick speak at the 2007 annual meeting of ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership and invited him to address to the BCFM board as part of our strategic planning process.

As O’Sullivan notes, organizations like BCFM and BCCA are moving into demand-driven business models. Commoditization has reduced the market value for traditional products and services and as a result organizations need to examine who else is benefiting from their membership services and being paid for that value. 

O’Sullivan’s perspective reminds us that we shouldn’t look at the impact of new media developments like online ad brokerages and the widening field of video distribution platforms solely as competitive threats. Broadcasters have nearly a century of experience in serving the advertising community. Throughout this time, we have continued to optimize advertising value for our clients and the ad revenue processes for our companies.

While we may face many uncertainties about the New Year, one thing we can be certain about is that the next generation of media businesses will greatly value the opportunity to view the market from atop our shoulders rather than having to grow those insights from the ground up.

On behalf of the BCFM board and the staff of BCFM and BCCA, our very best wishes for successfully seizing these opportunities and enjoying a prosperous and rewarding New Year.

Mary Collins is the president and CEO of the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association, a professional society for addressing the diverse needs of financial and business professionals in the broadcast, cable, and electronic media industries. Her column appears here every other Friday.