Digital Naming Convention
As stations sell advertising on their digital channels, websites or any other digital asset, buyers and sellers need to have a method to identify each

In March 2006, the TVB eBusiness Committee announced the adoption of a naming convention to identify local stations' digital sub channels and in January 2007 reassigned the following call letter prefixes for web and mobile transactions.

*In order to handle the increasing demand for TV station Web Site and Mobile assets, the last two alpha prefixes in the above chains will be assigned to station Web Site and Mobile transactions. For stations with a "W" prefix, the designator for a Web Site transaction is "I" and the designator for Mobile is "J." For stations with a "K" prefix, the designator is "R" for a Web Site transaction and "S" for Mobile .

For consistency, the task force is asking stations to assign their primary HDTV signal to a call letter with the 'D' or 'M' prefix, as illustrated above. (Nielsen will address exceptions on a case by case basis.)

For questions about the implementation of this Multi-Platform naming convention, please contact your software system vendor(s) and/or Nielsen representative. Sales, traffic, agency, DARE, EC and EI system providers have been informed of the Task Force's decision.

The TVB/AAAA Joint Task Force will continue its work to create a long term, comprehensive and widely implement-able solution that will provide a naming convention for stations' digital, web and other multiplatform offerings. In the short term (6-12 months), however, your immediate adoption of these call letters will allow the industry to move forward on electronic processing and permit the selling/buying of local digital assets to conform to current business practices.

If you have any questions on the information contained in this bulletin, please contact David Friedman.