10 VIDEOAGE November 2023 After 100 Years, Broadcasting Can Still Show Its Muscles NAB Show New York Report As the most important and influential U.S. broadcast association, the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is proudly promoting its 100th anniversary, having started both its convention and association in 1923. Its first convention was held in New York City. It then moved around to 14 U.S. cities before it outgrew most of the spaces offered by various venues. In 1991, it moved to Las Vegas, where it has staged its major event in April ever since. However, in 2015, NAB returned to New York City, taking over the Content & Communications World (CCW) event, which it rebranded as NAB Show New York. With this year’s preliminary attendance number of 12,231 people (in 2022 it reached 9,500 attendees), the New York event is just one-tenth of the size of NAB Las Vegas, but it’s still good in terms of the film/TV and broadcast industry’s participation, especially considering that the recently concluded MIPCOM in Cannes, the content industry’s largest gathering in the world, officially recorded 11,000 attendees. Held, as usual, at the Javits Center, which is located on the West side of Manhattan, this year’s NAB Show New York began on October 24, five days after the conclusion of MIPCOM — the events typically run concurrently — a change that was especially appreciated by NAB participants who had just returned from MIPCOM, such as Toronto, Canada-based Nextologies, which was able to send some of the same group of executives to man its stands at both MIPCOM and NAB New York this year. Next year, the gap will be even better with the NAB Show New York starting earlier (October 8-10, with exhibits October 9-10) at the Javits Center, and MIPCOM occurring later (October 21-24) in Cannes. Similarly, their spring shows won’t be colliding since MIP-TV will take place in Cannes, April 8-10, 2024, and NAB Las Vegas will follow later, April 13-17, 2024 (with exhibits April 14-17) at the very large Las Vegas Convention Center. The three-day NAB Show New York event featured both an exhibition hall that opened on October 25 with 270 exhibiting companies, of which 50 hailed from outside the U.S., and a series of seminars, including “AI Creative” (with 20 sessions), “Post-Production” (with 36 sessions), and “Streaming” (with 21 sessions, one of which touched on the market saturation of FAST channels). Other seminars included 11 sessions aimed at TV station groups, which also explored FAST and AVoD channels for local TV stations, and 11 sessions about broadcast content. There were 225 sessions hosting 300 speakers. Among the 225 NAB sessions, the one titled “TV2025: Monetizing the Future” gathered TV station group CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CTOs, CROs and CDOs for strategic conversations about how changing technology is powering emerging and developing revenue streams. The session addressed topics from the rise of streaming and Next-Gen TV to historic changes in audience measurement and advertising technology to the role of the cloud in creating more content for a multimedia audience. TV2025 offered TV industry leaders insights into their changing industry. Speakers included Blake Russell, EVP, Station Operations and Content Development, Nexstar Media Group; and Brian Morris, CISO, Gray Television. Broadcasting is now able to offer linear addressable advertising, as demonstrated in the U.K. by ITV with a service that will soon be available in 1.3 million TV households, and thus be able to compete with the advantage that streaming now provides. The ITV announcement follows a successful beta trial of the ad-replacement technology over the last 12 months, during which more than 30 million addressable ads were deployed. This is the first step in ITV’s roll-out of addressable targeting in live linear viewing and it is considered a game-changing move forward for the TV broadcasting industry. As was expected, streaming was a big attraction at this NAB Show, both on the exhibition floor and in the conference rooms, as were live demonstrations of production wizardry. NAB Show New York featured both an exhibition hall with 270 exhibiting companies and a series of seminars. The Nextologies stands at MIPCOM (left), and at NAB (right). Streaming services were a big draw at this year’s NAB Show One of the sessions that were held on the exhibition floors
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