The Transaction Platform for Linear TV.
Sellers package, price, and disclose inventory on their terms. Buyers send a brief or buy off the catalog: request to on-air in hours, not weeks of email. Human or agent on either side.
The Machine Already Works.
Our own order automation has planned, priced, ordered, and reconciled national linear campaigns for years. Switchboard opens that machine to every buyer and seller who wants to deal directly: both sides, people and their agents.
One State Layer for Every Relationship.
One platform, many tenants. Private catalogs and negotiated rates are visible only between the buyer and seller who agreed them; open catalogs stay discoverable to any authorized buyer, no relationship required.
Packages defined your way: dayparts, programs, genres, rotators, run of network. Publish rates and availability, answer on request, or hold them back and quote each campaign. Push it through Switchboard's APIs or agent-to-agent protocols, or let Switchboard pull from the systems you already run.
Send a brief and the seller plans back the first pass; or, when the menu is published, order off it under your negotiated agreement, like a deal ID in digital. Price locks when you commit, on every deal type.
One authoritative record per order: validated, price-locked, approved by a human, written into the seller's traffic system, and reconciled to the ON AIR moment.
Demand Your Team Can't Afford to Chase. On Your Terms.
Point your team at your biggest accounts and the strategy behind them; Switchboard services the rest. Mid-sized agencies, in-house teams, and performance buyers arrive prequalified, transacting on your published terms: incremental demand, far less manual work, and control you never give up.
Package inventory your way. Dayparts, programs, genres, rotators, run of network. Your prices, your currencies, your guarantee levels.
Nothing airs without you. Your approval gate on every order. Your make-good policy travels with every package.
Show only what you choose. Publish your avails, answer on request, or hold them back and price each campaign when the brief comes in. What you reveal, and to which buyer, is your call.
Connect your way. Push catalog, rates, and avails to Switchboard through its APIs, agent-to-agent protocols, or whichever surface you prefer. Or point us at the systems you already run; Switchboard calls them and does the adapting. No systems ready? A weekly file drop and an approval queue work from day one.
Convert soft spots. Standing remnant windows clear inventory that would otherwise lapse worthless on Sunday night.
Standing remnant windows turn expiring avails into cleared revenue: the 25-30% of inventory manual workflows can't move in time.
The Linear TV Desk You Don't Have to Build.
Adding linear, or already buying it? Either way, this is the desk you do not have to build or staff up. Pitch, plan, and place national and local TV with the team you have, while the platform handles the repetitive work of placing and tracking orders: your people spend their time on strategy, not paperwork.
Send what you have. Ship an audience plan, campaign specs, or a plain brief, no package IDs required. The seller assembles the first pass to hit your goal; you accept it, or send it back for another pass.
Win the business you decline today. Add linear as a service line without a buying desk. Buy named content or audience reach, national or local, whether the seller publishes a catalog or prices your campaign on request.
Speed your clients can feel. Brief to on-air in days; catalog orders confirm in hours. Price locks when you commit, so what you accepted is what clears.
One integration, every seller. You pay the price you agreed and the economics stay yours. Bring your own agent or use ours: one integration reaches every seller you deal with, and your humans keep every approval decision.
Three Questions Shape Every Deal.
What you pay for, when you buy, and how you place the order. Mix the answers however the buy needs; every combination books the same way, with a person approving where money commits.
What you pay for
Spots or an audience. It sets who carries the risk when the audience does not show up.
Pay per spot at the seller's posted rate. It is the cheapest way in, and higher-priority demand can bump it before air: no guarantee it runs.
Pay a fixed price per spot, guaranteed to air in the position you bought. The airing is locked; the audience it draws is not part of the deal.
Pay a CPM for the impressions that actually air. No make-good if delivery runs light: you pay for what the schedule earns.
Pay a CPM in your currency: Household, P2+, or a demo. The seller guarantees delivery and makes good on any shortfall.
When you buy
The same inventory prices differently by how far ahead you commit.
Commit a budget ahead of the season and lock rates early, then draw it down order by order as the weeks run.
Buy as the quarter unfolds at the going rate, no commitment required. The everyday market price.
Inventory still unsold as air approaches, offered at a discount to clear before it lapses.
Inventory that opens up late: an advertiser pulls out, ratings overperform, a schedule shuffles. Marked down, and gone fast.
How you place it
Send the seller a brief and let them build it, or take what is already published. Both are first-class.
Send an audience plan, campaign specs, or a plain brief, no package IDs required. The seller assembles the first pass to hit your goal, mixing published packages with ones minted for you.
When the seller publishes packages, prices, and availability, pick them and book. Instantly where the seller's standing rules allow it, or sent for sign-off. Either way, the gate is one the seller set.
What Each Side Owns, and What Switchboard Runs.
Switchboard runs the machinery between the decision and the air. You keep the decisions.
- Packaging, prices, and availability
- What you disclose, and to which buyer
- The approval decision on every order
- Make-good policy and delivery posts
- Who buys on negotiated terms
- Catalog, rates, and avails distribution
- Order validation and the price lock
- The state machine, submit to ON AIR
- Proposals, quotes, negotiation, approvals
- Webhooks, audit log, reconciliation
- Delivery into traffic and agency systems
- Strategy, planning, and the client
- What to buy and the price to accept
- Creative and copy rotation
- Billing and payment, direct by default
Sellers publish rate cards by class, length, and tier, scope them to a single deal, or quote per campaign. Buyers lock the price when they commit; what you accepted is what clears.
One defined lifecycle with human gates where money commits. Partial acceptance per line.
Send a brief and get a seller-built plan back, with quoted prices and an accept-if-within-tolerance band. Sellers counter at the gate instead of losing the order.
Signed webhooks, append-only events, full replay. Hints, backed by authoritative snapshots.
Every order, rate version, and decision on an immutable record. Who did what, when, at which price.
Define packages your way, versioned and integrity-checked. Publish them private to a deal, or open to everyone.
Post delivery in the order's currency; guarantees reconcile against it and your make-good policy fires on shortfall, automatically.
Query real availability where the seller publishes it, ask when they share on request, or get it resolved inside the plan. Ingested from sellers, never invented.
Confirmed orders delivered into your agency system of record on the industry's EDI rails, the same rails your station invoices already ride. Billing stays put.
Your Agent Can Integrate From the Docs Alone.
REST, MCP, CLI, webhooks, files, and a full web experience expose the same operations on both sides of the market. An index at /llms.txt lets agents onboard themselves; humans keep the approval decisions.
Humans Own Decisions. Secure by Default.
Approval gates wherever money commits. Automation owns the transitions between them, never the decision itself. Nothing spends, clears, or airs without a person saying so.
Short-lived scoped credentials, allowlisted callbacks, signed webhooks, and an immutable audit log. Counterparty content is data, never instructions.
Money settles directly between buyer and seller by default; Switchboard moves state and charges sellers a published, flat tech fee. Where no relationship exists, optional cleared settlement through Simulmedia covers every cleared seller under one agreement.
Common Questions.
Is this "programmatic for linear"?
It's the part programmatic never delivered for linear: execution. Linear order workflow (selling titles, daylocks, clearance tiers, make-good states, political LUR) is a different machine, and it's the only machine we build.
Do I need to build an agent to use it?
No. Humans get a full web experience on both sides: an order desk for buyers, a catalog console and approval queue for sellers. Agents are welcome, never required.
We're not technical. Can we still sell on it?
Yes. Most sellers connect through an interface they already speak: Switchboard calls the order and inventory systems you run, or your team pushes catalog, rates, and avails through our APIs or agent-to-agent protocols. And if neither is ready, a weekly file drop and an approval queue get you live in about a week, no engineering required. You automate more when you want to, not when we say so.
Who controls pricing?
Sellers, on every dimension: advertiser class, creative length, guarantee tier, clearance tier, with remnant windows and negotiated rates scoped to individual agreements. Price it on a published card, scope it to one deal, or quote each campaign when the brief arrives. However it is set, the order locks it when the buyer commits.
Do sellers have to publish avails or prices?
No. A seller can publish availability and rates, answer avails on request, or keep both back and quote each campaign when the brief comes in. What to reveal, and to which buyer, stays the seller's call. However the price is set, the order locks it at confirm: what you accepted is what clears.
Who handles the money?
By default, no one but you: invoicing and payment settle directly between buyer and seller, and Switchboard charges sellers a published, flat tech fee. Optional cleared settlement through Simulmedia exists for counterparties with no relationship, priced transparently, make-goods back-to-back.
Can I send an audience plan or campaign specs instead of picking packages?
Yes. The Proposal deal type takes an open request: your plan, budget, flight, and constraints. The seller assembles the first pass, mixing published packages and custom packages minted for your request. Set a tolerance and a plan within, say, 2% of your specs can book automatically; where the seller cannot fill the whole ask, the plan says exactly what it cannot meet. Nothing books until you confirm.
Does this work with our agency billing system (Mediaocean, Strata)?
It is designed to. EDI is how station billing already reaches agency systems, and Switchboard delivers confirmed orders into that same flow (Mediaocean, Strata). Switchboard moves the order state; billing and reconciliation stay exactly where they live today.
What does Switchboard cost?
Buyers pay the price on the rate card, and the economics stay yours. Sellers pay platform and per-order fees. Optional cleared settlement is priced separately and transparently.
Does Simulmedia buy on its own platform?
Yes, and it is always disclosed. Simulmedia demand seeds liquidity on the same rails, same rules, and same gates; it does not skip the line.
Why not wait for industry agentic standards?
We interoperate with standards as adapters: REST today, agent-to-agent protocols as they mature. The sellers driving volume are shipping now.
Integrate Once. Reach the Sellers You Choose.
Slots are limited on both sides. Sellers get white-glove onboarding from first connection to live catalog; buyers get first access to catalogs and the sandbox.