January 4, 2011 An Electronics Show That Big Media Companies Dare Not Miss By BRIAN STELTER NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/business/media/05media.html?ref=technology&pagewanted=print LAS VEGAS — When ESPN announced a high-definition channel nine years ago, its executives barely knew about the Consumer Electronics Association. By the time it was ready to announce a three-dimensional channel last year, the network elected to break the news at the association’s Consumer Electronics Show, or C.E.S. This week at C.E.S., it is following up by announcing that ESPN 3-D will start broadcasting 24 hours a day, giving 3-D television buyers more to watch. ESPN’s embrace of C.E.S. attests to the importance of the show that begins this week for media and technology companies alike. Nowhere is there a better display of the symbiotic relationship between entertainment and electronics. “You have to know what the screens are today, and what the screens are going to be in the future, and where you do that is C.E.S.,” said Bryan Burns, who is leading ESPN’s 3-D push. When the trade show officially starts on Thursday, media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Jeffrey Bewkes will be inspecting new tablets and Internet-connected television sets and meeting with allies and partners like Google and Verizon. They will be discussing new ways to distribute content — always with an eye toward maintaining control over it. The show’s status as a media summit meeting has risen in the last few years, as has the realization that device makers can help their products stand out by cutting deals with content makers. “So many of our devices rely on the content that’s coming from Hollywood,” said Karen Chupka, a senior vice president for the electronics association. And even the simplest deal to, say, display a 3-D football game on a set at Best Buy requires handshakes and contracts. “It’s still about relationships, and those relationships are forged over dinners in Vegas and at the tables,” said Bernard Gershon, president of the consulting firm GershonMedia and a former Disney executive. “That will ultimately be useful in trying to make next-generation distribution deals.” A smattering of such deals is usually announced at the show. For instance, Intel will raise the curtain on a new computer chip design that comes with built-in protections for digital movies, and will announce a deal with Warner Brothers to stream higher-quality movies that way. Global advertisers and marketers will be in attendance, too, to brainstorm how best to employ new technologies — particularly of the mobile sort — in their sales pitches. Analysts say this year’s show is in some ways an amplification of last year’s trends. There is talk, like last year, about 3-D TV; about connected TVs, also sometimes called “smart TVs,” which pledge to pair the Internet and traditional TV viewing; about cloud computing; and about apps on screens of all sizes. Cisco on Wednesday will unveil new features for set-top boxes that it says will reduce the threat of cord-cutting by cable customers. More than anything else, there is talk about tablet computers — which bodes well for media companies that want to charge for their content on the touch-screen devices. In a new five-year forecast released on Tuesday, Forrester Research said it expected tablets to grow as fast as MP3 players in the United States, and projected that 82 million Americans would own them by 2015. Tablet evangelists like Mr. Murdoch, who is releasing an iPad newspaper called The Daily this month, will be eager to see new, cheaper competitors to the iPad. (Most of the meetings with media executives happen in private suites and hotels. In some cases, executives sign nondisclosure agreements to see nascent technologies several years before they are publicly announced.) Meanwhile, 3-D evangelists will be trying to renew interest in expensive 3-D sets, which first received a lot of media attention this time last year. Sales of the early 3-D TV sets have been sluggish at best, and skeptics abound, but Mr. Burns suggested that the “ramp-up” was just beginning. “We’ve been hearing people saying, ‘There’s not enough content yet.’ They’re absolutely right. And we’re going to change that,” he said in an interview. ESPN 3-D, which started last June and was only on the air for live sporting events, will be on the air full time starting on Feb. 14. Along with a few live games each week, the network will rebroadcast archived games. “This, for us, is very much an image of just what happened with H.D.,” he said of the gradual roll-out. At C.E.S., Mr. Burns will be meeting with set manufacturers, distributors and others to, as he put it, “make sure the entire food chain works in harmony.” Separately this week, Discovery, Sony and IMAX will give a name, 3NET, to the 24-hour 3-D channel that they are expected to start later this winter. The Consumer Electronics Association sees Hollywood as a growth area for a show that already draws about 126,000 attendees. In concert with the United Talent Agency, it is making a more concerted effort this year to invite studio executives, directors and producers to the show, offering red carpet treatment and organizing tours of the show floor and even sponsoring a “Hollywood assistants program” to hook people early in their careers. The electronics and entertainment industries “literally work hand in hand,” Ms. Chupka of the electronics association said. Some media companies even see fit these days to announce new programming at C.E.S. — the DIY Network will be promoting “Hollywood Hi-Tech,” a reality show about celebrities’ custom-installed home theaters. Some companies, like NBC Universal, have booths on the show floor, while others, like CBS, hold private parties elsewhere. “I can feel that some of the pre-2008 excess is back,” Mr. Gershon said, pointing to the $50 billion valuation of Facebook that was made public earlier in the week. “The big, slow-growth media companies don’t want to miss the next opportunity in the space.” -- ======================================== George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
