NAB2007 Happened in Vegas

Slightly over 108 thousand registered for this years’ event, about a quarter from outside the US. It’s a technical show and a television show attracting geeks and who use new gizmos and geeks who sell gizmos. It’s the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) finest hour…hours, days, actually. In recent years the NAB in Las Vegas has become a show for web-heads, those who use video and audio or sell it to broadcasters.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt transfixed conventioneers Monday with “fundamental truth.” For broadcasters not otherwise transfixed by exhibit halls filled with gizmos, the interest of advertising trumps all. Google’s deal with Double-Click will be good for everybody, said Schmidt, only considerably better for Google than anybody else.

Google’s army of happy code warriors have invented a filtering system for YouTube so content owners not content with display ads next to their video clips can rip them off. It will be quite automatic, via the web, and offering no possibility for Sumner Redstone to negotiate.

ftm background

Remnant Sale! Cheap Ads! Call Google!
Google’s ambition to reshape – if not revitalize – advertising sales has never been a secret. With the advantage of looking at advertising through totally new eyes, they bring a totally destructive process to traditional ad sales. The Web mind-set is nourished by this kind of positive deconstruction.

Viacom vs Google/YouTube: Negotiations By Other Means
Viacom filed a huge law-suit against YouTube, and thereby Google, charging copyright infringement. Billion dollar law-suits make headlines not unlike an 80 year old buying his first red Ferrari. Customers and investors – literally and figuratively – beware.

Tom and Jerry Are Going To Quit Smoking For The Most Part, Courtesy of Turner Broadcasting and the British Broadcast Regulator, But All That Violence In Those Same Cartoons – That Stays
Turner Broadcasting knows a good PR opportunity when it sees it for its Boomerang cartoon cable network. When a woman complained to the British TV regular that smoking in two Tom and Jerry cartoons was bad for the health of tiny viewers, the broadcaster responded it would remove from those two cartoons any smoking that appeared to be condoned, acceptable, or where it could encourage imitation.

Whole New World for Radio Ads: Google
It could be good news for radio advertising. It could be great for commercial broadcasters. It could go nowhere. Or, it could be transformative. Google will now sell radio ads.

2006's Word of the Year - iFad!
Trend spotting is a no luxury. Media makers mine this diamond of knowledge like caviar before the well-heeled gourmet, the stuff of life. What will the world be like tomorrow: the best to get there before somebody else and hoard the spoils?

“In Viacom (Mr Redstone’s empire), you're either doing a business deal with them or being sued by them,” said Schmidt. “We started with the former and ended with the latter.” Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion., far less than the amount Google invests in happy intellectual property lawyer warriors.

And no media gathering is complete without Microsoft sparring with somebody. This week it was Adobe over new media players. Microsoft launched their Silverlight cross-platform plug-in media player. Adobe launched a new version of their Media Player, targeting television producers and advertisers. Adobe’s Media Player is a bigger-better Flash extension. MS Silverlight is intended to compete with Flash.

The intellectual moment came from NAB President David Rehr explaining heuristics:

“Do we call the new, high-tech Mercedes S-Class car a horseless carriage? Of course, not. Broadcasting is using the equivalent of horseless carriage language in many ways. We have been using 20th century language to define ourselves and our position in a 21st century world, and, that has to change.”

IBOC (in-band, on channel) digital radio was going nowhere, he said, until iBiquity – the patent owner - changed the name to HD Radio.

He did not say “Eurika,” as that would refer to the Eurika-147 standard for digital radio slowly progressing in the rest of the world.

Rehr said the NAB would “fight with everything we have” the music industries never-ending quest to impose greater rights fees on broadcasters. And, of course, the NAB will fight the satellite broadcasters.

Mr. Satellite – Mel Karmazin, Sirius Satellite CEO – was conspicuously absent this NAB show due to a prior commitment – testifying before the US Senate Commerce Committee. For two decades Mel was the emperor of radio at these broadcasters conventions. Now, as he puts together the deal merging Sirius Satellite and XM Satellite (before they simultaneously burn up in stratospheric debt) he is the pariah.

NAB’s Rehr also promised to fight the satellite radio merger “with everything we have.” In his opening remarks Rehr described the proposed Sirius/XM merger as monopoly that “lined the pockets of financiers and corporate executives.” Of course, the broadcast de-regulation legislation that the NAB championed with everything it had – and won – lined the pockets of financiers and corporate executives. But, that light bulb went on.

Rehr also said that “most nights I can’t sleep because I think about a man whose first name begins with the letter M.” (see note) Sleep and heuristics aside, Rehr welcomed NBC Universal back into NAB membership.

And Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Michael Copps offered a few words from the regulator side of life. The proposed Sirius/XM merger is, for him, “a pretty steep climb.”

News of the Virginia Tech tragedy was slow getting to Las Vegas. During a discussion of television violence FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate asked Commissioner Copps “Have you checked your Blackberry lately?” The FCC is soon to release a report on the effects of violence on television, which Variety reported under the sub-header “Agency Wants Authority to Regulate Violence.” It’s a plan!

The Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) simultaneously met, providing at least some substance. It consisted largely of bloggers screaming – in person rather than on screen – that they have annexed the universe, reinforcing the conventional wisdom that bloggers (at least those passing themselves off as “serious”) are blow-hards.

Left unreported are the dozens of after-hours, exhibitor-sponsored, table-dancing parties and dinners that attract most of the attention in Las Vegas. Said one on-location celebrity: “I can’t even get room service.”