LAS VEGAS-When tens of thousands of attendees descend on this desert city this April, there will be much to discuss: NextGen TV and advanced advertising; cloud virtualization and OTT; the repack and 5G. But there's an important task to accomplish before then.Consider as we head into the 2020 NAB Show: What does the future look like for your organization? And how do you want to get there? The thing I'd encourage [is not] to really focus on specific topics, said Rick Ducey, managing director of the consulting firm BIA/Kelsey. Technologies like 5G and IP are important, he said, but the real question is, what ultimately do broadcasters want to do about them when it comes to their long-term business strategy.
It's a bit like going to the grocery store, loading your basket, getting home and then saying, now what?' You need a plan and a strategy, he said.
INTERDEPENDENT BUT UNIQUE
Chris Brown, NAB executive vice president of conventions and business operations (Image credit: NAB Show)Attendees at the NAB Show, April 18-22, should start by considering what products and services are they building for the future, to serve what needs and demands, in what markets and what business models.
Gone are the days of one simple flowchart that can fully explain that entire ecosystem, said Chris Brown, NAB executive vice president of conventions and business operations. With the growth of the show and the rapid evolution of the media and entertainment industry, what has emerged is a very interdependent set of disciplines and sub-sectors that each has a unique perspective and set of needs.
Where to begin? This year's show will underscore major trends facing the industry and will be broken into three major elements: creation and production, distribution and monetization, and content and consumption.
Leading the way: The impact of streaming and OTT on the media industry that will be covered during the two-day Streaming Summit, which returns this year. The streaming market has grown much more crowded since the last time the industry gathered in Las Vegas.
Streaming has moved well beyond just a trend bubbling in the background, Brown said. The continued growth in consumption of streamed content as well as the rollout of several new services by major entertainment brands means that streaming is becoming more and more a part of mainstream content distribution.
The lobby of the LVCC will feature The Streaming Experience, a new OTT demo area that will offer more than 50 OTT platforms across 80 devices. (Image credit: NAB Show )There will be abundant proof of this when attendees walk through the doors of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Here, 12 separate living room spaces will be set up in the middle of the lobby as part of The Streaming Experience, a new OTT demo area that will offer more than 50 OTT platforms across 80 devices, including streaming boxes, smart TVs, tablets and mobile devices. The goal is to make comparisons that an ordinary viewer wouldn't get the opportunity to make-such as contrasting content, video quality, ad formats, playback features and delivery methods, according to Dan Rayburn, Streaming Summit chairman.
What makes this experience different from many of the other buzzwords floating around the show, Rayburn said, is that this technology is tangible and real.
A lot of the buzzwords that people talk about are not real. 5G is not yet real; no one can see it, he said. Everything [in the Streaming Experience] is real-world right now. You can see it, buy it, use it, touch it.
The area will include streaming content from Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Netflix and others, and will include hardware-which will be raffled off at the show's conclusion-from the likes of Amazon, PlayStation, Apple and Samsung.
As cozy as this living room setup may be, the goal is to give attendees the chance to test out nearly every live and on-demand streaming service on the market today.
The chief technology officer of Warner-Media, Jeremy Legg, will give a keynote at the summit and is expected to touch on the challenges of transitioning thousands of consumers from one streaming platform to another-namely the recently announced HBOMax streaming platform that is set to debut in May. WarnerMedia is one example of a company that is attempting to harness disparate brands under its umbrella-including HBO, DC Comics and CNN-and loop them into a new streaming venture.
This opens up a key opportunity for the media industry.
What's key for broadcasters to understand is that they maintain a critical and valued role in the local video ecosystem as both content creators and distributors, said Ducey. Television will not be jumping ship from its core audience and goals anytime soon, he said, even as streaming and OTT continues to thrive.
For generations, local audiences connected with their favorite TV content first over-the-air and then via MVPD systems, he said. Local TV broadcasters have now extended the ways they connect with audiences leveraging newer, exciting and highly impactful IP-based technologies, more bandwidth and better processing from smart TVs, mobile devices along with PCs, laptops and tablets. As audiences migrate to these new distribution and consumption environments, so too must broadcasters.
Today, it's connected TV that is attracting most of the viewing and ad spending, Ducey said, including smart TVs that access various TV apps, AVOD (free ad-supported on-demand streaming video services) and subscription-based VOD services. While there is certainly successful viewing of OTT video on non-TV devices, broadcasters should be aware that ad units on smart TVs are more engaging and attractive to buyers, Ducey said.
NEXTGEN OPPORTUNITIESBroadcasters should also pay close attention to reports like the recent one in Variety that re
