Sharing With You What I Share With My Friends
A new format. The NAB floor, a microphone that shouldn't work, & Netflix's secret weapon.
Last week in edition #151, I wrote about experimentation.
Here is mine.
From now on, once a month, I am going to send you the same kind of messages I already text my friends during the week. “Did you see this?” “Listen to this one.” Things I would hate for you to miss.
Here we go.
1. The NAB floor is smaller. The show is not dying.
NAB Show 2026 closed with about 58,000 attendees. Up 5% from 2025, but still 44% below the 2017 peak of 103,000. This is my tenth NAB. The shrinkage is visible: no satellite trucks in the parking lot, entire exhibitor categories gone, booths replaced by software demos on laptops.
Three causes behind what is actually happening.
Engineers no longer need to fly to Vegas for information. Product announcements, demos, and deep dives stream on YouTube within hours, and most vendors now run online workshops for serious buyers. The exclusivity that filled the floor for two decades is gone. The information is everywhere. The room is no longer required.
The industry is aging, and the next generation does not think like us. Most broadcast engineers are between 50 and 70, retirements are outpacing replacements, and the cohort building for YouTube, TikTok, and streaming-first does not see a $5,000 trip to Vegas as necessary.
US media consolidation collapsed the domestic attendee base. Local TV groups that used to send teams of twenty now send three executives, if that. The decline is structural, not a pandemic hangover. NAB lost 12,000 attendees between 2017 and 2019, before COVID even started.
This is why IBC in Amsterdam is the show worth watching. In 2015, NAB was almost twice the size of IBC (103K attendees vs. 54K). Today the gap is down to 12,000 attendees. NAB did not get smaller because IBC got bigger, they both shrank. NAB shrank faster. Europe is running 5 to 7 years behind the US on the digital transition, and when it hits full speed around 2028, IBC will face the same pressure NAB is absorbing now. If you want the unvarnished version of this thesis, read Evan Shapiro.
The question for each of us is the one a friend asked me in a text last week.
Does NAB still work for you, or are you going out of habit?
If you cannot answer clearly, you are going out of habit.
2. The masterclass in listening hiding in ninety seconds.
Dallas Taylor, who runs Twenty Thousand Hertz and has made me listen to the world differently for five years, just put out a short video where Ben Majchrzak, senior A1 at NBC Sports, walks through where the microphones actually sit during an NBA broadcast.
The surprise is not how many mics he uses. It is where he puts them. Most of what you hear on the broadcast does not come from the microphone you would expect. Ben has been refining these placements for years, and what he describes in ninety seconds is the product of a thousand small decisions most viewers will never consciously register.
Watch it here. If you work in audio, you already know this. If you do not, this is the best ninety seconds of free mentorship you will get this month.
3. Netflix opens the live operations door.
The Netflix Tech Blog just published a long piece called The Human Infrastructure: How Netflix Built the Operations Layer Behind Live at Scale. It is worth your time if you care about where live operations is going.
Casper, Brett, and Alo walk through how Netflix acquires signal from remote venues, manages traffic, and serves millions of simultaneous streams. What surprised me is where they put their focus. The operational complexity is not in the streaming software, which is largely solved. It is in the people layer. Who is on call. Who owns what decision. How a runbook gets written so a new engineer can follow it at 3 AM when something fails.
Here is the part I keep thinking about. Traditional broadcasters spent decades building the opposite culture: tribal knowledge, specialists who are never replaceable, workflows that live in the head of the person who built them. Netflix is building the system where the company outlasts any individual. That is a cultural shift most of our industry has not even started. The tools will follow. The culture is the hard part.
One quote I cannot let go of this week
“Every company is a media company now.” Heard many times on the floor at NAB, Devoncroft, and SVG conferences.
Quick poll
Know a colleague asking if NAB is still was worth the trip, working on an audio team, or rebuilding live operations? Forward them this. One of the three will land.
See you next week.
Oscar S.
OMG... Life evolves, every day, every project, every event. Some shows I am an octopus (multiple roles), others an EIC / Tech Manager. It's 2020s. If I don't think we can deliver a successful show, I'll pass on the project.
We are asked to use systems that we would not have used years ago. I'll reconsider newer brands. Clients want more with less.
In class we discuss brand x vs y. My 20 cents? A lot has to do with vendor support and knowledge base. My gear preferences have evolved. In 2015 or so we debuted an IPTV system at a high profile event thanksmtoma great mfg rep and vendor.
Back to NAB - over the past couple of decades more information is available online and there are more road shows. With NAB east or NY companies started rolling out product year-round, not waiting for tradeshow season.
While I like IRL, I am mindful of budgets.
Companies NEED to be hybrid to be more successful: Create tradeshow events that bring in those not able to be on site.