The National Association of Broadcasters hits town this week.
Broadcasting? I thought broadcasting was dead…taken over by the internet, tablet computers, Netflix, and Twitter.
…and yet, there it is, the National Association of Broadcasters convention…among the top-5 best attended conferences in a town that hosts the biggest international conventions anywhere on the globe.
The event prompts some immediate reactions for me as I straddle the dual careers of TV News Anchor and Voice-Over talent.
- Broadcast talent are announcers, aren’t they? Isn’t “announcing” the most vilified voice-over delivery on the planet right now? How ’bout that! Don’t believe it. Announcing is alive and well.
- See the tag-line to NAB: “Where CONTENT comes to life”? This is the broadcasters’ challenge. Bringing content to life where the audience is.
- Where’s George Whittam? (keep checkin’ out the blog this week!)
- Pray that “broadcast” survives… a HUGE chunk of the work that comes to voice-actors is from the programs supported by radio and TV.
- Next to CES and NAMM, NAB is also one of the top geek haven conventions of the year…making it a great time to have a press pass.
Over the weekend, my wife and I got together with VO Promo voice Joe Cipriano, Ann Cipriano, and Joe’s friend Stoney Richards, a broadcaster from D.C., L.A., Pittsburgh, and anon. You’ll find Stoney as a re-appearing 
character in Joe’s new book “On Air”. Stoney was in town working for CBS Radio, doing interviews with country stars for the ACM awards show. Stoney works at KDKA in Pittsburgh…one of the most venerable broadcast properties on the map.
This week, I will also meet-up with John Pozadzides and Cali Lewis of GeekBeat TV.
Am I going to hit the NAB exhibit floor? You bet. I want to see Steve Savanyu at the AudioTechnica Booth, Hillary Money at Blue Microphones, and Rebekah Wilson of Source-Connect over at Booth ##C1122.
All of that is “broadcasting”… so typical of them to cast that net wide to include so much of what’s old, new, and developing…truly a broad spectrum! I’m proud to be doubly a part of an industry working so hard to reinvent and be agile in the marketplace.
Speaking of Source-Connect…did you see that Source-Connect NOW is in its Beta-4 stage? How many stages do they get? I’m not sure, but every time they run out a new update it gets better and better. In this version:
- Record – local audio in PCM WAV format
- Multi-connect – conference with 2 others
- Quality – you and your guest choose what quality you send, for better bandwidth management
- Stability – huge improvements
See the complete announcement about Source-Connect NOW’s new Beta release here.
Hopefully, I’ll get even more about Sourcce-Element’s plans for the future when I meet Rebekah Wilson, one of the driving forces behind Source-Elements.
CourVO
