To be honest, the last day of the NAB Show was creepy. Product and marketing managers seemed to be milling around, anxiously waiting for anyone to stop by. The halls were much quieter, and I was even able to take my time stopping by my last few booths because I didn’t have to wade through crowds of people.

The NAB released the numbers, approximately 83,000 people registered, but representatives from many companies were still happy about the show. I asked many people the same question: how has the drop in attendance affected your experience? And the answers were often the same. It’s an issue of quality over quantity. Just because not as many people made it to the show doesn’t mean that there weren’t some serious buyers there. more

My subjective thoughts on the show:

We know that the numbers were down, somewhere around 20 per cent, but that is nowhere near as bad as some predictions. I talked to people at many booths and most said that they had useful meetings, a very few said it was very quiet. Those that were getting interest said the main issue is finance; there are projects that need to go ahead but that the broadcasters will need to get credit.

And what was the buzz? I’m sure that new product introductions were well down. It just doesn’t make sense to spend marketing dollars on product launches unless they are sure to sell in the immediate future.

Manufacturers were stressing how their new products could improve efficiencies and lower costs. Even without the special circumstances, these two benefits are going to be essential to help TV adapt to competition for advertising from the web and new services like mobile and IPTV.

The media landscape was changing anyway; this year just makes it essential to adapt to survive. Any broadcaster that is still tape-based should seriously look at migrating to file-based operations if they want to stay around. The benefits are compelling.

As a walked around the show floor, I was frequently asked what new products impressed me. Apart from the emerged 3D technology, several products that did impress me were also selected by our Pick Hit judges, Look down that list and you will see the breadth of new product releases.

Despite the lower attendance at this year’s NAB show (the NAB announced that there were about 83,000 attendees compared with last year’s 105,000), the show was still successful for many exhibitors I talked with.

Though the economy affected the number of people at NAB 2009, the quality of those people was good. And I must say, it made the convention halls a little more easy to navigate!

NAB is all about innovation and technology, so I want to share with you some of the new products I saw at the show. more