Speeches: LT Books and TV

Last week I was on the road, giving a number of speeches in New York and Las Vegas. Perhaps the most interesting event I was speaking at was a one-day conference held by the Book Industry Study Group on the Long Tail of books. The presentations were all fascinating (check out the Abebooks one for a sample) and they're now online (my own opening keynote is here):

• KIRBY BEST, President & CEO, Lightning Source: "New Markets for the Deep Backlist and Small Sellers"
• IAN BRADIE, Press Distribution Director, Cambridge University Press: "How to Keep Your Titles Alive with Print-On-Demand" 
• MARK SUCHOMEL, President, Independent Publishers Group: "Best Practices for Publishing & Distributing Mid-list Books 
• CAROL FITZGERALD, President, The Book Report Network: "Best Practices for Target Marketing on the Web
• BORIS WERTZ,  COO, Abebooks.com: "How to Cost Effectively Sell Books to Micro-Markets

One of the other stops was a keynote at the National Association of Broadcasters convention (the big annual meeting of the TV and radio industry) in Vegas. Lost Remote blogged the speech here.

I had lunch with the NAB's new president, David Rehr, who I was pleased to discover is a PhD economist. I had to ask the obvious question: does the "B" ("broadcast") in the organization's name risk making it irrelevant in a multicast, many-to-many world? After all, the NAB charter says it represents only "free, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters." Over the air? Jeepers.

His answer: the NAB needs to redefine "broadcast" to include new forms of distributing video, from cellphones to the Web. Rehr's a smart guy, so he no doubt has a plan. But my suggestion to make it easy and drop the "B" entirely didn't get far.

Comments

[Safran]

Chris: Good for you. I have no doubt that Rehr is a smart man. But he is also hired to represent the interests of over-the-air broadcasters. It's a shame he can't help them understand their interests lie in the future and not in protectionism. I was encouraged enough at the start of his NAB speech when he spoke of going on the "offensive." Come to find out, his vision of the offensive is to have the FCC punish everyone equally. His vision of the offensive is to make all portable gadgets backwards-compatible with broadcast signals. Good luck with that. What a shame. A lost opportunity to bring broadcasters up to date. They have stop thinking they are in the broadcasting business and understand they are in the information distribution business.

-Safran, Lost Remote

[randy.f]

Drop the 'B'? That idea should die a horrible death. What you meant to say was 'drop the broad'. It would then become the National Association of Casters. Figure out if I'm joking :)

But in line with Safran's remark, I'm not sure how much I want to help those droids out.

-r

[vipip]

I have no doubt that Rehr is a smart man. But he is also hired to represent the interests of over-the-air broadcasters. It's a shame he can't help them understand their interests lie in the future and not in protectionism. =)

[上海数据恢复]

OK

[tisane]

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