Tuesday
By PERRY MICHAEL SIMON in LAS VEGAS: TUESDAY marks the official opening of the CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, and the CES agenda kicked off with the opening keynotes by CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION Pres./CEO GARY SHAPIRO and IBM Chairman/Pres./CEO GINNI ROMETTY, while a slate of sessions at the C-Space hall at the ARIA had a distinct focus on podcasting.
The Keynote Starts The Show
SHAPIRO was joined by CTA EVP KAREN CHUPKA for the opening keynote at the VENETIAN previewing the convention, highlighting 5G, non-traditional participants like JOHN DEERE and PROCTER AND GAMBLE, "smart cities" technology, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, health care, and 8K television, plus the C-Space content and marketing track at the ARIA and the CES Sports Zone, which has been moved partly from its former home at the SANDS/VENETIAN to ARIA and will be the site of an announcement from TWITTER's JACK DORSEY and NBA Commissioner ADAM SILVER later in the week. SHAPIRO revived his "Ninja Innovation" theme he first introduced in 2013, announcing his new book "Ninja Future" and predicting that more problems will be solved by technology in the next two decades than in the last two centuries. And he announced a $10 million investment in funding for companies bringing diversity to the industry.
ROMETTY focused her remarks on her company's non-consumer-facing work, with representatives from DELTA, WALMART, and EXXON MOBIL joined ROMETTY on stage to help explain how IBM's initiatives have worked for them.
Content And Marketing
Most of the content-related activity will be taking place at the ARIA, where podcasting will be the focus in panels featuring iHEARTMEDIA's BOB PITTMAN and CONAL BYRNE, NPR's JARL MOHN, WONDERY's HERNAN LOPEZ, and executives from SPOTIFY.
Socks!
In a morning session, FACEBOOK VP, Global Marketing Solutions, NORTH AMERICA NADA STIRRATT and sock marketer BOMBAS CEO DAVID HEATH drew a big crowd to C-Space for a discussion about BOMBAS' success using the social media platform. Much to the murmured disappointment of many in the crowd who came to hear more about FACEBOOK's success and controversies, the talk was instead focused on the growth of the sock business as a "disruptive brand."
New Podcast For Jemele Hill
At another C-Space session, JEMELE HILL, the former ESPN host and commentator who recently joined THE ATLANTIC, announced that she will launch a podcast for SPOTIFY. "UNBOTHERED," which will cover a wide range of topics from pop culture and politics to sports, will post twice weekly beginning in MARCH. HILL joined SPOTIFY STUDIOS Global Head COURTNEY HOLT and THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's NATALIE JARVEY for the announcement, which included a discussion of SPOTIFY's activity in the podcast space (HOLT focusing on SPOTIFY's role in discovery and the growth possibilities, noting that while the impression has been given that the industry is "bigger than it really is," the opportunity for growth remains big).
Pittman And Mohn Talk Podcasts, Tech
NPR's JARL MOHN and iHEARTMEDIA's BOB PITTMAN appeared together in a C-Space session labeled "The Future of Technology-Driven Content," which in part turned out to be talking about podcasts (PITTMAN explaining to moderator JESSE ANGELO of the NEW YORK POST how radio can drive listeners to podcasts, MOHN declaring that "the economics (of podcasts) are great for us," both driving revenue and drawing prestige for those shows that don't generate as much money). PITTMAN touted the high CPMs drawn by podcasts but added that big advertisers, and thus big revenue, require big hit podcasts, and big hits require promotional tools like radio or TV to publicize the shows; MOHN mentioned the "shakeout" among podcast companies and predicted that it will continue.
"ALEXA has run away with the game," PITTMAN said of the smart speaker space, and added that for iHEARTMEDIA, "it's fantastic," delivering the company's radio programming to homes after clock radios became less ubiquitous. "The good news is they (the audience and the speaker manufacturers) want audio," PITTMAN enthused. MOHN said NPR's experience is similar, with the network becoming the default news provider for the platform. "The smart speaker becomes the new radio," MOHN said.
Asked about virtual reality and augmented reality, PITTMAN dismissed the technology as still too hard, and MOHN expressed his preference for 2-D. On live programming for audio, MOHN said NPR is "committed to the live-ness" and has put the word "live" in its top-of-the-hour newscasts as a differentiator; PITTMAN said "live is of our essence." But PITTMAN dismissed interactive programming (as with "BLACK MIRROR"'s choose-your-own-adventure episode) as "a stunt" similar to what radio was doing in the '70s.
PITTMAN and MOHN both characterized radio's relationship to new technologies as just earning how best to make use of them.
Making Hit Podcasts
A panel on "Building Podcast Franchises" looked at how some shows break through to generate big listenership and repurposing for television and live events. SPOTIFY Head of Content Partnerships LAUREN JARVIS cited two routes her company uses to build value for podcasts, narrative (with SPOTIFY's partnership with VICE for "EL CHAPO" as one example) and "building voices" (developing shows like JOE BUDDEN's to bring in new audiences.
WONDERY CEO HERNAN LOPEZ admitted that he and his Chief Content Officers were "neophytes" who knew nothing about podcasts when they started, but while they knew that audio drama was the category they could develop, it was not until "HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME" achieved success that the company hit upon the true crime narrative format as its focus, leading to the hit "DIRTY JOHN" with the LOS ANGELES TIMES.
Meanwhile, exhibit halls at the LAS VEGAS CONVENTION CENTER and SANDS will open to attendees, with GOOGLE once again plastering the city with its marketing, BELL HELICOPTERS showing off its prototype for a flying UBER, and OLED 8K TVs everywhere.
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