Event Preview: NAB Show

March 15, 2012 World Screen Top Stories
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LAS VEGAS: A look at the highlights of the 2012 NAB Show, held in Las Vegas from April 14 to 19, when nearly 200 first-time exhibitors are set to showcase at the event.

 

Broadcasters are constantly being challenged to come up with new ways to deliver content to their audiences; it’s the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)’s mission to be there to help. The annual NAB Show serves as a meeting place for digital media and entertainment executives to converge and discuss solutions that transcend traditional broadcasting and embrace innovative ways of bringing content to new screens.
 
Nearly 200 first-time exhibitors are set to showcase at the 2012 NAB Show, held in Las Vegas from April 14 to 19. These new companies will join a variety of NAB Show veterans on the 850,000-plus square foot exhibition floor.
 
Also on the exhibit floor this year are two new attractions: Start-Up Loft, a showcase for new companies, and Content Market, a central place to unite programming executives with digital distribution platforms, featuring the Content Lounge and the popular Content Theater. NAB Show’s sales division reports that space is currently sold out for several targeted destinations and special attractions, including Start-Up Loft and Online Video, an exhibit area showcasing solutions from companies that are reinventing the way content owners and consumers are connecting. A number of other exhibit areas are also sold out or nearly sold out.
 
The NAB Show has evolved over the years to keep pace with, and steer the course of, an ever-changing industry. The effort is punctuated by this year’s theme, The Great Content Shift: Defining Your Evolution. “It’s always a struggle each year to capture the essence of what’s going on in the set of industries that we represent,” says Chris Brown, the executive VP of Conventions and Business Operations for NAB Show. “We thought this theme captured it well because there is so much happening now; in terms of change and the shifting of technologies and business models. There is a major shift happening with content, from being delivered in a very linear fashion to now the ‘anywhere, anytime’ expectation that every consumer of media has. What we’ve seen in our business over the last five to ten years is that you have to be able to create and deliver content across multiple platforms. It’s very much a multiplatform world now, and our show has changed to reflect that.”
 
NAB Show has lined up Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer of Netflix, to take part in a Content Theater Q&A session. Brown says he’s particularly excited to have Sarandos on board to share his insight about being on the front lines of content-delivery innovation. Gerhard Zeiler, currently the CEO of RTL Group, is also set for a Content Theater session.
 
The Content Theater, located on the exhibit floor in the South Hall, features four full days of high-level speakers focusing on entertainment, technology and commerce.  Companies featured include iTunes, YouTube and Disney-ABC Television Group. Entertainment One Television’s John Morayniss, James Packer of Lionsgate, John Pollack from Electus International and Jens Richter of SevenOne will take part in a session on innovators of international TV production and distribution. Another session on over-the-top television will feature execs from Amazon’s LOVEFiLM and Facebook, among others; while executives from Debmar-Mercury, The CW, CBS and Warner. Bros. are set to take part is a session on how TV syndication is going over-the-top. The Content Theater also includes a section for nonfiction, telenovelas and children’s programming and licensing, and will include a number of preview screenings of movies and TV series.
In another part of the conference program, Bruce Rosenblum, the president of Warner Bros. Television Group, will be a featured Super Session speaker, alongside Ben Silverman, the founder and chairman of the multimedia studio Electus.
 
Brown comments, “These guys are tied to the content and content-commerce side, going all the way out to the syndication piece.  For us that’s important because that has not traditionally been part of our show, although many of these folks have either been attending or participating as speakers. If you look at the content life cycle that extends from creation all the way to distribution, that whole piece of actually filling the content pipeline does have a place and fits very well within the context of our show.”
 
Indeed, NAB Show has been focusing more attention on the content side of the business. “This is where the industry is looking to try to understand where the future is headed,” Brown says. “Content is king. The reality behind ‘anywhere, anytime’ content is that people ultimately are going to gravitate to where the best content is.
 
He adds, “The NAB Show can provide a unique value in this dialogue. The show has always focused on technology as it relates to driving media and new-media change, so that’s naturally led to a focus on digital media and Internet delivery. The development of content for this medium is really fueling growth.”
 
This has all helped to broaden the attendance base of the NAB Show, says Brown. “The audience that you see at our show today is very different than the audience that we had 10 or 15 years ago. In the past, we had a few curious folks from outside the traditional broadcast realm coming to the show just to see what’s happening, but now the playing field is becoming much more converged. It’s less about the delivery side of the equation and more about the content and how it can be adapted, delivered, and created for different platforms. You might be on the cable-network side of it, you might be on the television-broadcast side or the film side, but in all of those realms people are trying to figure out how best to take advantages of the platforms out there and the content that you’re able to provide.”