NAB sees flurry of deals
Attendance down, but action still brisk
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For the first time in years, attendance was unexpectedly down at the annual gathering of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, influenced by cramped budgets and the pullout of CBS from the trade org.
Yet a reduction in foot traffic -- preliminary attendance figures for the NAB confab showed that 112,766 people were registered, compared to 115,293 in 2000 -- turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise for exhibitors.
From Sony and Apple to British telecine maker ITK and screenwriting software Final Draft, companies across the board boasted strong sales and positive meetings with buyers.
"The more serious people (came) to this year's show," said Dick Anderson, general manager of media and entertainment for IBM, which left NAB generating $50 million in service orders and future business. "This time it's not all talk, but deal time."
Among the show's more major announcements:
- Sony formed Concadia Solutions with Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting) to advise companies climbing into the new media and digital production realm.
- CNN inked a $20 million deal with IBM to digitize the cabler's entire 120,000-hour library of archival footage to be used as a revenue stream and licensed to other productions. Other cablers or companies with large libraries of footage stored on tape are expected to make similar costly moves toward digital storage.
- Global Crossing, which is competing with NeTune, TRW's PicturePipeline, Media.net and Wam!Net to create a network to digitally distrib film or TV dailies, scripts, f/x shots and other offerings, inked a deal with BBC Technonlogy and VDI Multimedia to build its own $100 million venture.
And with only a year to go before broadcasters are scheduled to go digital, there was obviously a keen interest in companies selling digital systems and offering digital rights management services.
The only major soft point of the show: Set-top boxes positioned across the show floor featuring much-hyped interactive TV services from a slew of companies including Microsoft, Canal Plus and OpenTV, among others, attracted little interest.
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Show was also stocked with celebs, political rhetoric ... and worries.
NAB welcomed George Lucas, who said he'd never shoot on film again while promoting Sony's new 24p CineAlta high-definition camera (being used to shoot the next installment of "Star Wars") and Ben Affleck, who promoted Avid's line of editing suites.
Back home, broadcasters are depressed by shabby ad revenues. The networks and affils are being forced to transition from analog to digital. And in the nation's capital, a broadcast ownership cap keeping the network-affil balance in check is in danger of extinction.
Not even NAB prexy-CEO Eddie Fritts -- a keen lobbyist who certainly knows the art of Washington double-speak -- tried to sugarcoat the situation when giving the confab's opening speech.
"Never in our industry's history have tensions been so high," Fritts said.
On the eve of the convention, CBS abruptly resigned from NAB, for the same reasons Fox had in 1999 and NBC in 2000. The trio said they couldn't be part of a trade org that sided with affils and small station owners in supporting a Federal Communications Commission ownership rule blocking major nets from further growth.
CBS, Fox and NBC are fighting to overturn the reg, which bars a broadcaster from owning stations that broadcast to reachingmore than 35% of the national audience. Affils say repeal of the cap will give nets undue leverage.
So why was anyone smiling as they walked the Strip?
Affils said they've accepted the inevitable -- that the cap will be repealed. No one was jumping up and down shouting at NAB over the issue. Instead, everyone just wants the waiting to be over.
Good thing broadcasters were resigned to their fate before attending a congressional breakfast, and later in the week, a breakfast with new Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell.
Across-the-board, the Washington politicos agreed that the 35% cap would probably be overturned.
Delivering more bad news, Powell said broadcasters need to grapple with the fact that 84% of Americans now pay for cable or direct satellite broadcasting.
ABC anchor Sam Donaldson asked Powell if it was true he'd recently said broadcast TV was going the way of the Dodo bird.
"People need to be aware of persistent trends," Powell said. "I don't think free over-the-air broadcasting will ever be dead."
Broadcasters are all too aware that their future is murky, in light of the stiff competition posed by cable and satellite providers, as well as the troubled relations between nets and affils.
During his keynote, Fritts made a point to thank ABC for remaining an NAB member.
At the same time, Fritts said it was time to stop obsessing about the net-affil discord and focus on next year's government-ordered deadline to broadcast digitally.
"All this is occurring at a time when we're faced with the very expensive transition to digital. The very future of broadcasting rests on this successful completion of this transition," he said.
