The "Countdown to Digital" clock on TVNewsday's home page reminds us on a daily basis that broadcasters are inside the 180-day window for completing their digital conversion.

While most of the attention is going toward ensuring the continuity of revenues generated by a station's primary channel, industry analysts are telling us that broadcasters could leave money on the table if they aren't also considering some of the more advanced new-media options enabled by DTV.

One of those analysts is Mark Fratrik, vice president of BIA Financial Network. Fratrik, who is also an adjunct professor at The Johns Hopkins University, a former economist for the NAB and a past MFM board member, summarized a few of those options in an article appearing in the current issue of MFM's magazine, The Financial Manager.

Among the options in multicasting, Fratrik says. According to a BIAfn report, more than 350 stations — which represent about one of every five stations in TVNewsday's database — are multicasting digital video channels. These channels include programming from established "analog" networks such as CW and My Network TV as well as such emerging national networks as LATV, RTN and Ion's QUBE.

In addition, many stations are creating local all-news channels or hybrid channels that combine local and national content, such as the WeatherPlus channel being transmitted by a number of NBC affiliates. 

As TVNEWSDAY reported, a recent article in USA Today outlines how many of these multicast channels are also drawing upon the library of vintage TV shows for their programming.  

Of course, with well over 80 percent of TV households connected to cable, satellite or another multichannel video programming distributor, reaching a larger local audience can require retransmission of the multicast channels.

Typically, we assume that this is a contentious affair. However, it is possible to find the "win-win-win" that brings value to the station, the cable system and — most important — the viewer.

In fact, MFM members have discussed case studies on this topic at our last few annual conferences.

Multicasting across platforms

Fratrik counts distributing content via Web sites as another of the new media opportunities that stations need to include in their digital strategies. Many stations are beginning to mine the possibilities by offering downloads of news stories and frequently refreshing the top stores on their Web sites to build audiences. 

Online viewers represent another good market for advertisers. Nearly 90 percent of Web viewers watched pre-roll video ads and 10 percent of them "clicked-through" to the advertiser, according to a new study of video ad units by Break Media and Panache, a video ad technology provider.

Stations have a way to go before their online mining taps into the mother load. Borrell Associates' Gordon Borrell recently told TVNewsday that TV stations' Web sites must be more than mere online extensions of their current brand and service if they hope to get a larger share of the online ad market.

According to Borrell's research, stations garnered only 6.9 percent of the $8.7 billion spent by online advertisers last year. Borrell believes that a station's strategy for success must involve developing freshly branded platforms that aim to be the No. 1 sources of all local information, including news, sports and weather as well as classifieds and directory listings.

Become the top local destination on the Web

Stations also need to expand their Web presence in order to maintain their role as the primary source for news. While television remains the leading source of news in the country, according to a Pew Research Center report released earlier this week, the group that relies most on the Internet for news has a median age of 35.

Fewer than half of this group watches television news on a regular basis. The study also found that 80 percent of this group has a college education and they are twice as likely to read an online newspaper than a printed version.

For additional motivation, there's also the research Borrell Associates conducted for Internet Broadcasting, the leading local Internet solution provider for broadcast publishers and advertisers targeting local markets.

IB-affiliated stations had on average 61 percent higher revenue from online advertising last year vs. non-affiliated stations — $871,723 vs. $542,275, according to Lost Remote's analysis of the study.

Motioning stations toward the Web would also get a resounding second from James Dix. The securities analyst and media consultant advised this year's MFM Conference attendees that while there's parity between the amount of time the average consumer spends with TV and the percentage of ad spending, the amount of time spent with online video is 30 percent compared to only 8 percent in ad spending.

Media buyers participating in the same session as Dix acknowledged that they expect to see a greater rationalization between those two numbers, which should provide stations with even greater incentive to develop a compelling content for a competitive online destination.

Mobile video: Give advertisers what they want

Mobile handheld digital television is another new-media option that stations need to be exploring, according to BIAfn's Fratrik.

Stations can use their digital spectrum to reach consumers through their cell phones, laptops and other portable media devices. In fact, a recent BIAfn study commissioned by the NAB estimated that television stations could garner as much as $2 billion in additional ad revenue from mobile TV by 2012. 

BIAfn projects that the initial market for mobile programming will include simulcasts of what is available on TV. The Open Mobile Video Coalition, which represents over 800 TV stations, is confident that broadcasters will be delivering those broadcasts by next February. 

Meanwhile, MobiTV, which serves more than four million cell phones, is providing a good indicator of the medium's ability to deliver what advertisers want. A recent study commissioned by the service found that mobile video ads generate more than four times the click-through rate of direct-response ads.

Giving advertisers what they want is the focus of MFM's 2008 fall Regional Seminar in New York.

The seminar, which will be held on Oct. 16 from noon to 5 p.m. at the Penn Club in downtown Manhattan (30 W. 44th St), will include examples from stations that, as the title suggests, "Follow the Money — Give Advertisers What They Want." Registration forms and additional information are available at the MFM Web site.

Mark Fratrik observes: "Long gone are the days when broadcasters just sent one signal to their transmission towers. Now they are challenged to fully utilize their technical facilities, as well as their marketing capabilities, to extend into areas previously unimaginable."

BIAfn's analysis reinforces what I think we already know: broadcasting's digital age needs to be more than a field of dreams.

We cannot assume that if we build a digital operation, the advertisers will come. The only way we can bank on television's digital future is by continuing to compete successfully for viewers and give advertisers what they want.

As the industry's dynamic history demonstrates, if we do this, the money will continue to follow.

Mary Collins is the president and CEO of the Media Financial Management Association (formerly the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association), a professional society for addressing the diverse needs of the industry's financial and business professionals. Her column appears here every other Friday.