In addition to its main function as a showcase for the latest gadgets, THESE has long been a meeting place for those in the entertainment industry.
This year’s edition, which kicks off Monday in Las Vegas, will be no exception and comes amid a high sense of urgency for traditional media companies to come to terms with the overlords of technology. As movie theater box office and linear television decline and layoffs continue to thin the industry’s ranks, technology is in some ways a welcome source of optimism despite its many complications and a culture still distinct from that of Hollywood.
In addition to CES mainstays like Sony, Panasonic and other hardware companies once again holding court with massive booths, Disney, Discovery Warner Bros. and SAG-AFTRA are among those in attendance. NBCUniversalAmazon, Roku and Fox Corp. are among the many announcements that are among the leaders of the panels. Two of the conference’s rare keynote speeches are delivered by the CEOs of SiriusXM and Nvidia.
The latter company, which has enjoyed a meteoric rise to a market capitalization of $3.5 trillion, is more than 30 years old but, until recent years, was not considered particularly linked to Hollywood . Its chips and AI technology are now at the heart of animation, special effects and many other industry sectors.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, who took one of the biggest moves in history at CES by unveiling venture-backed (and ultimately short-lived) streaming startup Quibi in 2020, returns to help kick off the CES Summit. OpenAP public. The industry consortium’s half-day event will feature high-profile executives (among them Amazon’s Krishan Bhatia, Fox Corp.’s Jeff Collins and TelevisaUnivision’s Donna Speciale) discussing the challenges and opportunities of streaming .
Michael Kassan, former head of MediaLink, will once again chair the panel as a moderator and connector through his new company, 3C Ventures. The executive experienced a bitter and public rift with UTA, which acquired MediaLink and then fell out with Kassan. The two men exchanged chases. UTA and MediaLink, for their part, are also creating a buzz in Las Vegas, by organizing an evening with a musical performance by Meghan Trainor.
Advertising has become a key theme at CES as dollars continue to shift from traditional categories to digital and streaming. “It’s like a kickoff for the first steps,” Mark Marshall, NBCU’s head of publicity and partnerships, told Deadline in an interview. “We’re really starting our initial conversations at CES, so this has been a priority for us. »
NBCU is looking to drum up interest from a number of major pillars as it approaches the company’s 100th anniversary in fall 2026. “We really look at years 25 and 26 as one and the same,” said Marshall said. A new edition of BravoCon, the golf Ryder Cup, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, the 60th Super Bowl, the return of the NBA; FIFA World Cup on Telemundo – “All of these things weren’t on NBC at this point,” he noted, meaning the next one “will be huge for us.”
Similarly, Disney positioned its prelude to the debut, the Global Tech + Data Showcase, as an annual live CES presentation, broadcast live to those not in Las Vegas.
“We have truly invested over the last decade in technology that differentiates us from all of our traditional competitors,” Rita Ferro, Disney’s president of global advertising, said in a recent statement. internal maintenance. “We can also compete with any new technology platform, and what really sets us apart in all of those is our scale. The ability to have the amount of content that we have across all sports, which is a hugely popular market right now in terms of advertisers and where they’re spending their money, is also a differentiator.
WBD, for its part, has also been step up branding efforts on Max, deploying sponsor integrations and targeted ads. HBO’s third season White Lotuspremiering in mid-February, is the focus of a “Taste of Thailand” evening at CES, complete with a synergistic cooking demonstration by a Food Network chef preparing the cuisine for this season’s setting.
Analysts who study the intersection of entertainment and technology continue to see upside for companies that manage to make the most of changing consumer habits. Macquarie’s Tim Nollen noted last month a study by the Association of National Advertisers showing year-on-year improvements across the advertising value chain. “Ad tech is becoming more efficient,” Nollen wrote, with numbers in the report that “appear to indicate a growing ad tech market, with large-scale players reaping profits.”
Technology has undeniable appeal, but it is also a complex force for creative players in film, television and streaming. SAG-AFTRA, which made AI a key issue during its 2023 strike against studios and streamers, returns to CES for its annual LIT conference, short for “workplace innovation and technology.” Duncan Crabtree, national executive director and chief negotiator of SAG-AFTRA, will speak at the event, as will Russell Hollander, national executive director of the DGA, and senior officials from the WGA, IATSE and other guilds.