Posted by: Rick Ducey
Chief Strategy Officer, BIA Financial Network

“From broadcasting to broader-casting . . .” is the NAB trademarked angle on this year’s show.

While David Rehr asserts that the “broadcast model is not dead” broadcast executives like ION Media’s Brandon Burgess are extending this view. On my Super Session panel yesterday (“New Devices, New Opportunities”), Brandon said that if broadcasters are reliant primarily on the traditional advertising supported broadcast business model, they will not be maximizing their opportunities in a fast changing digital media world. He contrasted the slow-paced, bureaucratic culture of the broadcast industry with fiduciary obligations to share holders to manage risk with the highly innovative and trend shaping technology-based entrepreneurial companies.

Rehr’s implicit conclusion is that the competitive battle is as much between clashing corporate cultures and affinity for risk and innovation as it is with between digital and traditional media technologies. The NAB’s “broader-casting” mind bent is a step in the direction of taking broadcasters’ collective and trying to lead them into the land of the paradigm shift. Broadcasters are making moves, but these are not being executed against some grand, integrated and insightful strategy, but more as a set of one-off tactical moves.

Walking the show floor, peaking into some of the sessions and reading the company names on attendee badges all makes you realize that broadcasting is like the proverbial frog in the water. According to urban myth, toss a frog into boiling water and it’ll jump out. Toss a frog into room temp water and slowly heat it to boiling, it won’t recognize the change in time and allow itself to be cooked. Is broadcasting a frog or a prince (I have a secret passion for mixing metaphors, a guilty pleasure)?

Industry executives like NAB’s David Rehr are committed to creating possibilities for broadcasters whereas execs like Brandon Burgess take up the challenge of trying to drive home these opportunities at the industry level (e.g., groups like NAB, OMVC, ATSC) but also walking the walk in their own corporate board rooms and making the tough calls to just do it!

Tags: BIA, Brandon Burgess, David Rehr, ION Media, NAB, Rick Ducey

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