Media Mix: CES in The Age of Depression

2009-01-08
By Eric Easter

The exciting photo of the hustling, bustling Consumer Electronic Show attached to this article is in fact, not from the 2009 CES, but the 2008 CES. That’s because, like a lot of journalists who normally attend what amounts to the world’s largest Best Buy, I am not going. In a questionable advertising environment, tough financial decisions have to be made. And not sending someone to Vegas for a week to look at new toys was a pretty easy decision to make for a lot of media company accounting departments.

There’s real irony in that dynamic since the only bright spots in the economic downturn have been the categories of products being touted at CES. As always and certainly these days, it seems that in our worst times we gravitate to the things that will take us away from the pain. Video games, fancy cellphones with video and other googaws are the smart man’s bourbon and painkillers, and how the mind-enhancing and mind-numbing content these toys will transmit are the best gauges of how the world’s economy will play out over the next decade or more.

Truthfully, while it helps to be able to see things up close, you don’t exactly get a chance to play with them and put them through the wringer, at least not as a member the press.  The Consumer Electronics Show is less about the actual consumers and much more about selling to the people who sell to consumers. The press can help that along, but the vast majority of booth vendors are looking for pre-sales so they can get that extra bit of investment from stockholders to actually launch the product.   Good press helps to whet the consumer appetite of course, but unless you’re Al Roker, CNET or Gizmodo, you’re pretty much a distraction to the salespeople.

For those of us blessed or cursed not to attend (depending on how you see it), it’s not a huge loss. For the last three months since registration and from now until Sunday my e-mail inbox has been and will be slammed with
thousands of press releases about self-locking HDMI cables, magnetic energy plates, high impedance speakers, digital photo frames that double as a toilet and all manner of tools and tricks that purport to do more than the
next thing.

A choice few of these things will make real news, but all of it will mark real authentic innovation, and despite the idea that most innovation is coming from other shores, a good bit of the new and wonderful ideas will come from American companies – scrappy guys with three prototypes and shaky funding. Some of the best products from 2008 still have not made it to market. In this economy, I assume many of those companies will not be attending. That’s a shame.

For media companies in particular, even if they neglected to send a writer, they need to be paying close attention to what happens over the next few days. Specifically they need to look out – as always – for the “Killer Box”– that single thingamajig that will pull all of a consumer’s personal content into it as well as wirelessly stream movies and video direct from the web (not your PC) and put it all on your spanking new 60” flat screen.

At that point all bets are off, because while You Tube may make us internet stars, that seamless thingamajig will make us all TV producers. When that happens, all hell breaks loose.

My prediction: We’re very very close, but still one extra device or electrical cord away from Nirvana. I think we’re about 16 months away from that moment. But when it happens, consumer be happy. But media companies –be afraid. Be very afraid.

Eric Easter writes on technology and politics for EbonyJet.com. He’ll be covering CES 2009 – from his desk – for the next few days.