NAB says most will show up for Vegas convention

Tuesday, April 1, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.

Organizers of the next major convention to visit Las Vegas say they never gave a thought to canceling or postponing the event because of the war.

A spokeswoman for the National Association of Broadcasters said the organization is on track to draw about 92,000 attendees, which is on par with last year's turnout.

The 2002 show was down from previous years' events because of downturns in the technology industry as well as a fall-off in broadcast media advertising revenue brought on by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"I think everybody really enjoyed last year's show because the people who were there were there to work," said Stacy Perrus, a spokeswoman for NAB, which plans its annual Las Vegas show April 5-10 this year. "I think that is going to be true for this year."

Tourism leaders have kept watch on conventions and trade shows since the outbreak of war last month because those shows bolster midweek visits to the city. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said there have been no cancellations associated with the war.

NAB also is one of the largest trade shows by net square footage of paid exhibit space. It was Tradeshow Week's No. 3 show last year in its annual Tradeshow 200 publication with just over 1 million square feet of exhibits.

By those criteria, NAB is the second-largest Las Vegas trade show behind the International Consumer Electronics Show. The LVCVA does not rank shows by attendance because some shows don't come to Las Vegas every year, but based on last year's figures, NAB was the fifth-largest show hosted by the city.

"To say the war won't affect us at all would be naive," Perrus said.

But she added that NAB is a major focus for industry.

"If they have to choose one show, it's usually us," she said. "For many companies, we're the one-time buying trip of the year. For that reason, we haven't considered canceling or postponing the show. The only thing that would change our plans is if something disrupted air travel that would prevent people from getting to Las Vegas."

Perrus said so far all of NAB's keynote speakers have indicated they plan to attend. The big-name presenters include Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of USA Interactive and Vivendi Universal Entertainment; Rob Glaser, chairman and chief executive officer of RealNetworks Inc.; ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson; and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell and Commissioners Kathleen Abernathy, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. Comedian Bill Cosby also is scheduled to open the show.

Another reason NAB is so popular within the broadcast industry is that the show is actually a collection of several association gatherings. Among the organizations meeting in connection with NAB are the Society of Broadcast Engineers, the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, the International Webcasting Association, the Interactive Television Alliance, the World Teleport Association, the Digital Video Association and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

One organization meeting in conjunction with NAB is having to revamp it's show theme and program because of the war with Iraq, but a spokeswoman said there have been few cancellations by attendees.

Noreen Welle, director of marketing and communications for the Radio and Television New Directors Association, said less than 20 people out of about 1,000 planning to attend have canceled their reservations and some of those were for personal reasons and not the war.

Welle said the association has scrambled to place topics of current relevance on the meeting agenda. Among those are presentations on using new war-time broadcast technology -- satellite telephones, laptop editing machines and fly-through map design -- for stories in the United States. Welle said a session also is planned on the ethical decision-making process during war coverage.

Welle said another change in the program involves one of the association speakers, Nic Robertson, senior international correspondent for CNN. Instead of attending the event in Las Vegas, Robertson is now scheduled to speak live via satellite from Iraq.

"NAB brings general managers, station managers and engineers together," Welle said. "We bring broadcast journalists to the party."

archive