There may come a day when it's commonplace for people in subway stations and on elevators to watch video screens providing up-to-the-minute weather forecasts courtesy of their local TV stations.

It may be that broadcasters' cost-per-point rates increase, even though their ratings decline and that stations can become even more attractive to advertisers with locally branded entertainment opportunities. It also may be that TV really isn't a mass medium anymore.

Those ideas come from a top gun at one of America's most powerful media buying agencies: Steve Lanzano, COO of MPG's U.S. operations.

Lanzano's perspective has been shaped by his 27-year run in the ad industry. He's spent the last five years at MPG, a unit of Havas, and is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the North American unit, maintaining close relationships with the company's advertiser clients, which range from Volvo to Fidelity Investments to McDonalds.

He is about to report to a brand new CEO, Shaun Holliday, who joins the company Jan. 1 and whose experience has been outside the agency world, working with consumer-focused marketing companies. He replaces Charlie Rutman, who will maintain a senior adviser role with the agency.

Before joining MPG, Lanzano was CEO of another media planning agency, Mediaedge:cia, and was responsible for overseeing its U.S. and Canadian offices. Prior to that, he was global media director at the media agency Mindshare, and was focused on the American Express account.

He recently shared his perspective in an interview with TVNewsday Contributing Editor Janet Stilson.

An edited transcript:

Given the shaky economy and the multitude of media options available to consumers these days, is the value of broadcast network and spot advertising changing in the minds of MPG executives and your clients?

It varies. Clearly there continues to be ratings declines, especially on the national TV network level. There is less inventory in the marketplace [because ratings are lower]. The ratings are getting to the point where you have to ask: Is it a mass medium anymore? That's disconcerting.

TV, in many cases, still shows a very positive return on investment. There's an immediacy to it. You still reach a lot of eyeballs, but not to the extent that you did before. The concern on the advertisers' side is really dwindling ratings and people now looking at content in very different ways.

As DVR penetration becomes greater and greater, it's going to be more and more of a concern. The real question for advertisers and the real concern is the fractionalization of that rating point. How do we create scale and mass, especially with packaged-goods clients, movie studios and retailers with short-term promotions? They have to make an impact and, in a lot of cases, on a very quick basis. How do you deliver that mass audience? It's getting more and more difficult just doing it with traditional television distribution.

Are there things that TV stations can do on the local front that will make them more valuable?

The advantage of local is just that — it's local and it provides local content that you can't get anywhere else. If local stations were able to do more experimential-type things — branded local programming — I think all that adds up. That makes local a very attractive alternative.

A lot of stations are providing more and more local content to Web sites. They have local Web sites for their stations. And they sell that together with their television avails. That provides a nice complement. Newspapers have had a really tough time, but the one thing newspapers have is that they're local. You need to push the advantage of local news content or local entertainment content.

Is local advertising more important to advertisers today than it was before?

I don't know if it's more important or less important. It varies. It depends upon what your distribution is. It depends upon where your sales strengths are, or where your sales weaknesses might be. Local is a strategy, and local television is a way of reaching people in a specific area where you're either going to want a gross share, protect your business or increase penetration.

As your clients are planning their 2009 budgets, are you seeing any general shifts in terms of the proportions of the budgets that are allocated to specific media?

With the ability to advertise on online video, we're still seeing more and more shifts to digital. Search is still strong, while display might be flattening out. What's taking the brunt of the hit, to some degree, is TV, but also certainly radio and magazines.

Can you be a little bit more specific about the TV portion, both spot and network? Are you seeing a decline that's single-digit, double-digit?

Probably more in the high single digits | More …