For Broadcast July 09, 2008

Nissan's £1m deal with Chris Tarrant for a GMG Radio show underlines the shift in traditional power bases among media, talent and advertisers in the fragmenting and increasingly digital media world.

Nissan clearly believes a popular talent like Tarrant can deliver a radio audience. The car giant signed him up, then went to the broadcaster, a sort of pre-packaged deal that has had less success to date in TV.

With a direct, contractual relationship, Nissan gets more "ownership", raising the chance that Tarrant could become, say, the online face of Nissan.

But does this drive the value of the media - in this case GMG's radio stations? "The assumption now is that consumers are accessible like they never were before," says Michael Baylor, chief executive of strategic marketing agency The Rights Marketing Co. "I see this as endorsement 2.0."

GMG is arguably not a top tier radio group and so has less clout already. But, even so, is the same dynamic beginning to be felt in TV-land? Cody Hogarth, managing director of New State, the Endemol division that brokers innovative commercial deals such as the Apple iTunes Festival that ITV will air later this month, thinks not. He argues that pre-packaging is tried all the time with TV broadcasters but that the commercial/editorial divide remains.

Hogarth's team put ITV's Guy Freeman and Apple in a room to come up with the festival idea. "This was more effective than us coming up with a variety of proposals we hoped would work for ITV," says Hogarth.

So is the Tarrant deal with Nissan, to paraphrase Millionaire, the "final answer"? Likely not, but it is certainly part of a changing media game.