TV Advertising’s Liability Blind Spot – Guard Your Flank!


If you are using an external media buyer to place television spots in any of these markets, you will want to do your due diligence and request to see the contracts. Search for the term “joint and several”. This is not what you want to see.
The advertising industry has standards for lots of things, contracts and liability among them. We in the industry, the agency (“agent”) and marketer associations, have all agreed what’s best and logical. That being, the advertiser pays their agent for the buy, the agent pays the stations, and we all skip on down the road together driving business forward. This is sequential liability.
However, some media providers are making an adjustment to their contracts, changing to joint and several liability. Our research analysis found that this liability issue impacts 70% of the US!
At our agency we do a lot of contract compliance and have been surprised and disappointed to see this change. We have taken the necessary steps to protect our valued advertiser partners from any risk this may pose.
As an advertiser, you want to know that when you remit payment to your agency that, no matter what happens, they will be solely responsible to pay the stations. Unfortunately, in these new contracts, the advertiser is still legally responsible for compensating the station for their advertising EVEN AFTER paying the agency.
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Abilene – Sweetwater
Atlanta
Austin
Dallas – Fort Worth
Denver
Detroit
Harrisburg – Lancaster – Lebanon – York
Hartford & New Haven
Houston
Huntsville – Decatur (Florence)
Little Rock
Los Angeles
Louisville
Odessa – Midland
Orlando – Daytona Beach – Melbourne
Tampa – St. Petersburg (Sarasota)
Toledo
Tucson (Sierra Vista)
Twin Falls
Tyler – Longview (Lufkin & Nacogdoches)
Bangor
Beaumont – Port Arthur
Boise
Boston
Buffalo
Ft. Smith – Fayetteville – Springdale – Rogers
Jacksonville
Macon
Memphis
Miami – Ft. Lauderdale
Minneapolis – St. Paul
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Phoenix (Prescott)
Portland – Auburn
Portland, OR
Waco – Temple – Bryan
Washington, DC (Hagerstown)
Wilkes Barre – Scranton – Hazelton
Charlotte
Chicago
Cleveland
Columbia, SC
Corpus Christi
Gainesville
Grand Rapids – Kalamazoo
Greensboro – High Point – Winston Salem
Knoxville
New Orleans
New York
Norfolk – Portsmouth – Newport News
Sacramento
San Angelo
San Antonio
San Diego
San Francisco – Oakland – San Jose
Seattle – Tacoma
Spokane
St. Louis