LAS VEGAS – The Canadian Suite, packed as usual, was back at its familiar spot at The Flamingo this year. Sponsored by several dozen companies (including Cartt.ca), if you’re a Canadian in the industry, this is where you go in the early evening. Kudos to Applied Electronics for running it – and to their Rosie Patey, who does a lot of the work.
Like my opening paragraph above, not everything I saw or heard about at the 2007 NAB Show in Las Vegas can be turned into a full blown story like all of these here were earlier this week. Below is a virtual shaking of my notebook to see what falls out:
********************
Radio personality Rick Dees is the new Dick Clark. The legendary Los Angeles DJ was inducted into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame on Tuesday (Dees also gained fame for his song “Disco Duck”, which played as he strode onto the stage) looks just like he did in the 1980s when he hosted “Solid Gold”. He’s 57 and still looks 30 or so. Must be the sea air. Dees (pictured) now works for Emmis Communications’ KMVN Movin’ 93.9 but is heard around the world with his “Rick Dees Weekly Top 40.”
********************
Google’s vice-president of content partnerships, David Eun, told delegates he doesn’t see a broadcast model working in the broadband world and that his company instead sees a “clip-driven” culture as the dominant force.
********************
With all of the user-generated content on display, some of it very, very good by journalism standards, if not by reproduction standards, one wonders if traditional broadcasters walking into the massive Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Ikegami booths and seeing professional video cameras priced at US$48,000 or more aren’t wondering if they are wasting their money.
Executives from a number of new media companies like Current TV and large tech firms like HP, for example, showed chilling, excellent footage sometimes shot by self-taught journalists on the ground in war zones using nothing more than a consumer video camera and uploaded to video sharing sites using IMS.
And, for that matter with all that can be done with cheap software on a laptop in terms of editing and other forms of video processing, we wonder if buyers moving through the Avid, Quantel, Autodesk and other such companies’ displays weren’t also wondering about their budgets.
********************
Blake Krikorian is the CEO of Slingbox – the little unit that ties into your broadband connection and cable or satellite feed and sends your home’s TV signal to wherever your laptop or PDA is in the world – and knew he was in a den of doubters when he spoke Monday.
He told the assembled broadcasters that Sling is a good thing, that users buy these boxes so that they can watch their local TV wherever they are. That means the TV provided by their home town ‘casters is very important to them. Plus, if a Sling user is in a Nielsen metered home, someone watching their shows from a conference in Singapore will still register in the ratings.
“People are building tighter relationships with the networks like never before,” he said. But “we have to make sure we don’t use the notion of copyright to protect business models. It’s better we use that to protect content than business models,” because in the end, the broadcast business model doesn’t matter to consumers.
“They don’t delineate between transmission mediums or display devices or different locations,” added Krikorian. As we noted earlier this week, broadcasters don’t agree with him.
********************
HP’s research and development annual budget is US$3.5 billion.
********************
With everything now being captured, mastered and stored digitally, we’re at the point in the electronic media world where hype has met reality. “The tire-kicking phase is over,” said HP’s SVP, chief strategy and chief technology officer Shane Robison.
Technology, as we all know, has placed the end-user, the consumer, in control. But, said Robison, “they’re willing to pay a premium for personalization… that’s the reality you have to embrace.”
So broadcasters or content owners have to be ready to serve “even in moments that can’t be planned for,” he said, – like being in an airport facing a sudden flight delay.
“(Broadcasters) have to create content, then manage and distribute to monetize the consumer experience,” on whatever platform they happen to choose, explained Robison.
********************
You can’t help but come to NAB and see how far behind Canadian broadcasters are in the transition to digital. In Canada, we’ve done precious little to move to HDTV in comparison to the States. The deadline for their digital conversion (2-17-09) was everywhere. “The HD transition here is essentially over,” I heard a number of people say during my four days in Vegas.
Broadcasters there are fighting for multicast carriage so that new signals (and potential revenue sources) inside their digital streams can be delivered to local customers. Their association has a web site: www.DTVAnswers.com for consumers to turn to for any and all questions. American broadcasters have accepted digital – and investing in upgrades – as the cost of doing business.
In Canada? The best we can say, is: notsomuch.
********************
The coolest thing I saw at NAB was in Sony’s press conference on Sunday: 3D HDTV. Eye-popping and mind-blowing, this isn’t the silly tri-color 3D lampooned by so many SCTV skits. This version – the 2007 NBA All-Star game filmed by PACE cameras (left), a company backed by movie director James Cameron, does require a pair of special glasses of course, but the quality of the 3D and the resolution of the HD is so high you felt like you could reach out and tap LeBron James on the shoulder as he drove in for a dunk.
The NBA’s VP operations and technology Steve Hellmuth said the technology was used to deliver a live, off-site airing of the game in Las Vegas and he envisions the NBA bringing the all-star game to live venues all around the U.S. in 3D HD in the future.
********************
Finally, a bill that looks like it’s going to be adopted into law Stateside would seem to be something we could copy here in Canada. Sponsored by Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, the First Response Broadcasters Act would take steps to ensure local TV and radio stations “are on the list” to be able to maintain operations in critical emergencies, Landrieu told delegates on Monday.
Mainly, in dire emergencies like Hurricane Katrina, broadcasters will be high on the list to receive fuel and food so that they can continue to broadcast crucial information to people in catastrophe-ravaged regions. “Our local television and radio broadcasters were a lifeline to the people of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita rolled ashore in 2005,” said Senator Landrieu in thanking the broadcasters.
“By serving at the front lines of disaster response, it is important to know that local broadcasters are, in fact, first responders.”
Greg O’Brien is editor and publisher of Cartt.ca and covered NAB 2007 this week in Las Vegas.
