CES Stakes Its Claim in Content Kingdom

Industries as distinct as on-air broadcasting and mobile communications are converging through their common interest in content. So, it's no surprise that the annual U.S. tradeshow for the consumer electronics industry is elbowing in on content territory formerly dominated by television programming executives.

With the addition of exhibits organized under the banner Content@CES, a new segment of Intl. CES Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Assn. formally entered the race to see which tradeshow will emerge as the top forum for bringing creators of next-generation, Hollywood-type content together with buyers and distributors of it.

The longstanding forum for today's generation of content has been NATPE, the Natl. Assn. of Television Program Executives' annual conference and exhibition scheduled Jan. 28-31 at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, also in Las Vegas.

Like CES, NATPE is a Tradeshow Week 200 show, although the former was No. 1 on the most recent list with 1.7 million net square feet of exhibits and 96,484 attendees, while the latter was No. 124 with 219,000 net sq. ft. and 5,090 professional attendees.

What's more, compare these NATPE numbers (for its 2006 show) with five years earlier - when it was No. 47 with 415,000 net sq. ft. and 17,520 professional attendees - and the destruction wrought on the show by changes in the media and entertainment business becomes clear.

“When NATPE started, television station ownership was a mom-and-pop business,” explained Cynthia Littleton, deputy editor of news development for Variety (like Tradeshow Week, a Reed Business Information publication). “There were hundreds of stations, and NATPE brought them all together at a key time of the year to do business.”

Now, Littleton added, a small handful of key studio distributors control programming for a vast number of stations owned by an ever-dwindling number of media companies. “That led to a fundamental change in the marketplace,” she said.

At the same time, advances in digital technology have introduced consumers to anywhere-anytime availability of programming that they used to have to switch on their TV sets or go to a movie theater to watch.

“What you are seeing is a major interest in distribution of traditional Hollywood product digitally,” Littleton said. “It's the rub of the (current) Hollywood writers' strike. Consumers want the content. The question is, how much business is it now, and how much will it grow into?”

Enter CES. The death of Comdex and other horizontal computing-industry tradeshows, coupled with the increasing interrelationship of information technology and consumer electronics, have made CES the largest North American conduit for new products and services using digital technology. If distributors are more interested in digital than traditional distribution of their content, CES seems a logical place for them to be.

“It makes sense to merge NATPE-type content into CES,” said Bruce Frigeri, president of LifeSize Entertainment, a distributor of films and documentaries who used to exhibit at NATPE and doesn't anymore. “So much of what's out there for new business is based on technology. As a result, you've got to know what the technology is, how it works, so you can figure out how to package what you've got.”

That's music to Karen Chupka's ears. In a recent press release, CEA's senior vice president of events and conferences described CES as the “must-attend tradeshow for the digital entertainment industry.”

She made the statement upon hiring Nick Orfanopoulos, former director of NATPE, who is now a consultant for, you guessed it, CES' content section (for more on Orfanopoulos, see “Executive Shuffle Marks End of Year,” Page 1).

Judging from this year's CES, Chupka will need the help. Spread throughout the Las Vegas Convention Center's Central Hall, Content@CES included Sony and other major players in entertainment, such as NBC Universal.

“Sony Pictures Television still participates in NATPE, but moved the majority of its exhibit to CES in 2007,” Chupka said. “Content has already been happening for a number of years through the conference program,” she added, so exhibits were the next natural step.

In a blog entry titled “NBCU@CES: How We Got There,” NBC Universal's Frank Radice and Mark Lukasiewicz wrote: “The fact is, the content that plays on all those cool screens and cutting edge devices at CES has become just as important to CES as the devices themselves.”

So, where does all this leave NATPE?

Rick Feldman, president and CEO of the organization, advised not to worry too much about NATPE's demise.

For one thing, he pointed out, NBC didn't reduce its presence at NATPE in favor of CES; “they've just decided to do both. Every year is going to be a separate year, and we'll see whether those who decide to try CES feel that it was worth the investment.”

In Feldman's view, this digital entertainment town is big enough for both CES and NATPE. “They're a consumer electronics show; we're a business-to-business market, a 45-year-old organization of people who get together to buy and sell content,” he said. Just as NATPE likes to include some of the “technological marvels” that people can see their content on, he added, CES is expanding its base to include more of the content people can see on their gadgets.

“If you want to talk about the business of developing and producing and programming content, you're going to go to NATPE,” Feldman said.

Although Frigeri said he was more likely to try CES than return to NATPE, he added that the excitement surrounding content at CES “may be a short-term phenomenon. It will sort itself out eventually.”

In the meantime, Littleton said, there are still obstacles in the way of “getting content from the computer to the TV set. NBC needs to know how the latest chip that Intel is working on might solve that problem.”