Re: low NAB hotel rates for 2009

Apple and Avid will in all likelihood not return, while Adobe's booth was greatly cut last year to allow monies to be moved to the budget for the launch of Adobe TV. I doubt it will be any bigger this year. I can also remember when both Boris FX and Media 100 had large booths. Last year, their combined booth was quite small. Gone altogether from the halcyon days of yore are companies like DPS, in:sync and many others; swallowed up by others, or dead on the playing field.

Autodesk will be there until the sun goes nova, to quote my pal Tim Wilson.

I said it a couple of years ago and I believe it still today: NAB will return to being the "National Association of Broadcasters" show -- with a much smaller crowd. The distraction that was the multimedia contingent (read: creative things computer-based) will be gone and the show will once again belong to the engineers and broadcast moguls that were once (and really are) its core. Multimedia was a distraction from the show's real purpose and if NAB is going to survive in these days of massive cut-backs, they are going to have to focus on the part that they play better than anyone else. That is broadcast.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net