Excerpts from the 2006 TVB Annual Marketing Conference, April 20, 2006, featuring Brian Wheelis, VP and group media director (AT&T account), GSD&M

QUESTION: " How do stations attract advertisers to website opportunities without cannibalizing the traditional broadcast business?”

ANSWER: I like this question because gets to the heart of this industry's biggest obstacle to success in the near future. The first part of the question is your goal, "How do stations attract advertisers to website opportunities?". The second half of the question "cannibalizing the traditional broadcast business" is your barrier to winning.

Embracing your stations' websites as assets to be leveraged and monetized is fundamentally a shift in the game. To shift the game, we must redefine what it means in everyone's minds to win. Winning with multiple assets means giving your sales teams the big picture and responsibility for delivering it. This must be more than lip service , you must find the right ways to incentivize the sales teams to collaborate and succeed as a team.

So what's step number one? Redefine winning. If that means that they take a share each other's commission in every deal, they are going to ultimately realize the potential upside and dispense with the fear that paralyzes the linear (traditional) side of the equation.

Step number two sounds difficult but this industry more that any should be armed with the tools to make this happen. Redefine your station's brand in the mind of the consumer - deliver the consumer and the advertiser will follow. Leverage the assets that make your brand meaningful to the market and build on those as a base. And don't necessarily try to do it alone. MySanAntonio.com is built on a partnership between KENS 5 and the Express-News and it builds a broader perspective - both literally and most importantly, perceptually. The online user may be the same person as the TV viewer but their mindset and their expectations are very different.

Third, redefine the way your teams think of "the big idea". Lose words like "cannibalize" and "traditional" from your vocabulary. When you approach an agency or an advertiser, go in armed with the knowledge of what they do, what they've done (from a product standpoint and with you as an advertiser), and what drives their economic engine. By bringing solutions, your sales team and your brand bring value to the table. So even in a year when spot TV spending slides and online grows (which keep in mind is driven by the changing goals and drivers of the advertiser's brand - not necessarily a direct correlation between Spot TV and online), the value of your media brand and it's ability to engage your local consumer on the air, online, and throughout the community does not diminish. THAT positions you to sustain a net positive in ratings, in site traffic and ultimately in ad revenue."