Rick Feldman

World Screen Weekly, December 7, 2006

Rick Feldman

President and CEO

NATPE

The media industry has certainly debunked the old adage, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” Over the course of the last 15 months the way content is distributed, accessed and used has changed dramatically. It is generally agreed that the watershed moment came last October when The Walt Disney Company announced it was making episodes of select TV series available on Apple’s iTunes store for $1.99 each. Since then, it seems that almost every day a new platform is launching or a new electronic device is being introduced to consumers.

One thing is certain, while no one knows where the media industry is headed, the years of traditional linear television dominating the media scene are over.

To address this constantly shifting media landscape, NATPE’s theme is “Evolve and Prosper.” The conference, which starts January 15 with a day dedicated to mobile and continues through to the 18th, will be held at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.

“Traditionally NATPE represented a business that showed very little movement,” says Rick Feldman, NATPE’s president and CEO. “Some years the conference was a little more international and other years a little more techy, but primarily NATPE was a U.S. show about the U.S. syndication market. Obviously this has changed enormously.”

Feldman sees two major dynamics at work in the U.S. television industry. “The domestic syndication market is problematic and is facing several unknowns. What is the future of local stations? How much more consolidation will there be? What will happen to Tribune? There are fewer sitcoms produced by the networks—what does that mean for the syndication market?

“At the same time, digital is creating a myriad of new outlets, but the business models are only now developing,” continues Feldman. “Ten to 15 years ago the domestic business was humongous. There weren’t as many avenues of distribution but they represented huge amounts of money. Now there are many more outlets, but they are not making up for the money lost from the U.S. syndication market. There are a lot of things going on and none of us know what will happen.”

The NATPE conference is trying to give its participants the tools to navigate this sea change. Highlights include the Third Annual Mobile++ Conference, which will reveal the latest audience behavior research on how people are consuming digital media across multi-platforms; a keynote address by Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of the article-turned-book The Long Tail; the panel discussion “How to Create, Build, and Measure New Advertising Models Arising from the Media Marketplace”; and “HD FUNdamentals—A Workshop on Producing for HDTV.”

NATPE’s Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Awards, named in honor of Brandon Tartikoff, arguably one of the medium’s greatest programmers, will be presented to Stephen J. Cannell, writer/producer and chairman of Cannell Studios; Harry Friedman, executive producer of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy; Bonnie Hammer, the president of USA Network and SCI FI Channel; and Anthony E. Zuiker, the creator of the CSI franchise.

For more details about NATPE you can visit: www.natpe.org/conference/agenda/

Feldman expects between 7,800 and 8,500 attendees at the conference, of which 25 percent will come from outside the U.S.