C21 Media, a U.K. publishing company, said it issued a letter of intent to acquire the assets of the National Association of Television Program Executives, which is currently seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has laid off several of its staffers.

Any acquisition would need approval from the bankruptcy court, C21 said.

C21 also said it planned to hold two conferences for content producers and distributors in 2023 in locations where NATPE had operated conferences: Miami, Florida, and Budapest, Hungary. Specific dates were not disclosed.

“These two new events will provide a vibrant Hispanic and U.S. programming market early in the year, and a progressive Central & Eastern European content market in June, with some haste,” David Jenkinson, editor-in-chief and managing director of C21, said in a release. “Alongside these new event initiatives, we have issued a letter of intent to the management of NATPE with a view to acquiring its assets, which will be aligned with our business should this happen. Any acquisition would require the approval of the U.S. bankruptcy court.”

In a Chapter 11 petition filed last week at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, NATPE said it has run at a $1.33 million deficit in the first six months of the fiscal year after losing $1.92 million last year. 

The organization, whose money-generating events were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, has laid off staff members, retaining as consultants three former executives, including CEO JP Bommel, several people familiar with the situation said. Bommel has not replied to emails or telephone messages from B+C.

Last month, NATPE held its NATPE Streaming Plus conference in Los Angeles. The group said it planned to move its annual January marketplace and conference from Miami, Florida, to a resort in Nassau, the Bahamas. There have been no announced changes to that plan. Joe Schramm, president of Schramm Marketing (an unsecured creditor listed in the petition), said he was retained to create programming for the conference and has not been told recently whether or not the Bahamas event was going ahead. Schramm, who also programmed the L.A. streaming conference among other NATPE events, told B+C he enjoyed working with the organization and said he hoped the Bahamas event will go ahead. 

In its bankruptcy filing, NAPTE said it has total assets of $949,000 as of September 30, 2022, the end of the first half of its fiscal 2023. At the end of fiscal 2022, the organization had assets of $2.6 million. 

The Fontainebleau Miami Beach and Eden Roc Miami Beach Resort, where the NATPE marketplace and conference used to take place, are on a list of creditors that have the 20 largest unsecured claims against NATPE. NATPE canceled the January 2022 conference just 10 days before it was scheduled to begin, citing health and safety concerns for attendees during a rise in COVID-19 infections. Bommel said at the time that “although this decision from a financial point of view will cost the organization a great deal of money, that was secondary to our primary concern, which is to put the welfare of our members first." 

NATPE listed $1.2 million in liabilities for the six months ended September 30, including $148,187 in account payable, $20,000 in accrued payroll, $91,358 in accrued vacation and $773,133 in deferred revenue. 

In the first six months of fiscal 2023, total gross revenues were $1.329 million, compared to $892,911 in all of fiscal 2022.

NATPE listed expenses of $1.561 million for fiscal 2023 to date, compared to $1.895 million in all of fiscal 2022.

Among the biggest creditors with unsecured claims broken out in the NAPTE bankruptcy petition were Lionsgate TV, owed $128,800; MGM Television, owned $80,500; NBCUniversal, owed $80,000; MODco Media, owed $72,000, and Sony Pictures, owed $51,250. ■

Almost two years into the global pandemic, TV executives are finding there are many things that have changed permanently as a result of viewers’ altered habits and the need to do business differently. And some of those things are actually good for the overall business of television.

One thing the pandemic has changed, at least for now, is the ability to hold live events. In January, just as CES, NATPE Miami, the Sundance Film Festival and the Grammy Awards were preparing to go forward, omicron had other plans. CES was still held in Las Vegas, with 75% less attendance than before COVID, but Sundance went virtual, the Grammys were postponed to April and moved to Las Vegas and NATPE was canceled at nearly the last minute. In lieu of being able to attend the programming conference in Miami, Next TV talked to several executives who had planned to go about how the pandemic has affected their businesses. 

The main throughline is that the pandemic exponentially accelerated many trends that were already percolating pre-COVID. 

Chief among those is viewers’ whole-hearted conversion to streaming. While streaming was already coming on strong, with Disney Plus launching in the pre-pandemic month of November 2019, other services have launched in the past two years, rounding out the competitive environment. HBO Max, which got off to a rocky start in May 2020, now has a total of 73.8  million subscribers worldwide — up 13.1 million viewers year to year — when included with HBO. NBCUniversal debuted its streamer, Peacock, in April 2020 and just said last week that it had 9 million paid subscribers and a total of 24.5 million monthly active accounts. Discovery Plus finally launched domestically in January 2021 and had grown to 18.1 million subscribers as of July 2021. All of these services join pre-existing streaming offerings: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV Plus. 

Concurrent to the switch to subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services is the rise of advertising-supported VOD (AVOD) and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST). 

Subscription Fatigue Sets In

“Specific to Tubi and to AVOD in general, obviously the pandemic has incurred a huge medical, health and safety cost,“ Tubi chief content officer Adam Lewinson said. “There are so many families who have been hurting throughout this pandemic and looking for ways to cut back. Subscription fatigue was already a trend pre-COVID. Cord-cutters were looking for ways to not subscribe to four, five, six SVODs that cost the same as cable. When you are in COVID, you’re home with more time to spend streaming. If you are also looking to cut back, you do a cost-benefit analysis. Tubi is 100% free, and that makes it more desirable than ever.”

To that end, year over year Fox-owned Tubi has seen triple-digit growth in revenue and in terms of viewership, Lewinson said. 

Even pre-pandemic, viewers were cutting the cord to pay-TV services, putting a digital antenna on their roofs and keeping their broadband subscriptions to assemble their own, largely free, television services. Tubi and other FAST channels, such as Pluto TV and the Roku Channel, are part of that solution, as are so-called diginets, such as the Scripps-owned Katz networks — Bounce, Court TV, Court TV Mystery, Grit and Laff — that viewers can receive for free, via antenna, on TV stations’ digital subchannels. 

“If you look at the history of television, it’s always been 85-90% free and ad-supported with 10-15% being the pay tier,” Lewinson said. “As trends have settled and AVOD has risen, companies like Tubi have built our businesses. The trend line has really reverted to the norm — people really prefer the free with advertising model. There’s a subset of viewers who look to bypass commercials at any cost and they will pay for it. But the vast majority of viewers prefer the ad-supported experience.” 

Another advantage of these types of channels, which rely highly on studios’ library content, is that they are serving up nostalgia. Tubi alone has 35,000 titles in its library.

“Comfort TV has always been a part of TV viewing, and that had a profound impact during the pandemic,” Lewinson said. “If you are escaping pretty harsh reality, you don’t necessarily want to curl up with the next big SVOD show. People are turning to their own version of nostalgia. We’ve seen a tremendous spike in comfort-TV viewing.”

Along those lines, viewers find they don’t have to pay as much attention to comfort TV as they do to prestige SVOD shows, and many sometimes prefer that. 

“Because AVOD is free, it’s guilt-free casual viewing,” said Kevin Beggs, chairman, Lionsgate Television. “It’s different from watching HBO Max or Netflix where you feel you don’t want to miss a beat because you are paying for it. It’s a fundamentally different viewing experience — lean in versus lean out.” 

Concurrent to the trend of comfort TV is the trend of casual TV. In the first days of the pandemic, broadcasters, journalists and late-night hosts quickly had to pivot to broadcasting from their homes — whether that was Stephen Colbert doing shows from his bathtub or Jimmy Fallon hosting The Tonight Show from his kids’ attic playroom with his wife running the camera. Viewers got used to seeing local news anchors in their living rooms, and guests phoning in on Zoom with AirPods awkwardly sticking out of their ears.

While shows have been back in their studios since fall 2020, viewers’ expectation that they see all anchors sitting behind their desks in suits and ties or dresses has faded. If Rachel Maddow occasionally does a show from her cabin, no one is shocked. 

“Consumers are used to it now,” Tegna VP, marketing Meredith Conte said. “I think the fourth wall has been permanently broken.”

Part of that is also the rise of social media, where everyone is building their personal brands on their own time, giving viewers the sense that they know their local anchors and favorite celebrities personally. When those same people return to the studio, viewers want to feel that same level of intimacy with them. 

Remote Working: A New Normal

Remote working, a trend that had been evolving pre-pandemic and was suddenly everybody’s new norm in mid-March 2020, is also a trend that is here to stay. In television, that means far less business travel. Gone are the days when 50 people might fly in to watch a day of production, snacking on catered sandwiches while watching dailies on set. Now, all of that takes place on Zoom and nobody leaves their homes. 

“That type of video village won’t come back,” Beggs said. “There was definitely a compulsion and pressure to travel to sets, but I think all of that is going to be drastically cut, never to be seen again. It’s all working without the obligatory set visits from studio or network executives and all the tech has met the moment.” 

Like set visits, pitch meetings also have gone remote, Beggs said, and while that’s more efficient, it’s also less interesting. 

“You really have to tap into some creativity to make them not boring, plus everyone’s attention span has shortened,” he said. “You can’t hold the attention of a room remotely in the same way you can in the room. And people are precisely on time, there’s very little small talk. People have these presentations booked back to back.”

The flip side of this is the money and time saved by people not having to commute or travel for work. 

For example, the syndication sales team at Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group/Entertainment Studios cleared two shows without ever getting on a plane. “We cleared a two-hour weekend block in 99% of the country via Zoom,” Allen said.

Even with all of the changes, Allen is ultimately optimistic about where the business is going.

Like other disruptive times in history, “the pandemic has created new businesses, such as Zoom or home-test kits. It will ultimately balance itself out. People will return to travel and to the movies. People need to get out of their houses and have social communal experiences.” 

And the business was already headed in these directions, it just forced the conversion to new technologies and new ways of working that much quicker.

“The trend lines that started pre-pandemic, that’s really what we are facing now,” Lewinson said. “The face of television has permanently changed, the landscape is different than it was 10 years ago and that won’t change.” ■ 

The Consumer Technology Association said Tuesday (Dec. 21) that its upcoming CES 2022 in Las Vegas Jan. 5-8 will host a record number of Senators, and they will be showing up in person rather than remotely.

All attendees and participants in the show have to be fully vaccinated and CES is recommending testing for COVID-19 prior to leaving for Las Vegas and within 24 hours of entering a CES venue.

Discussing tech policy issues at a Friday, January 7, panel will be a mix of high-profile senators from both sides of the aisle: Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). The session will be led by Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada).

Also from the other side of the aisle, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) will talk about universal, accessible and affordable high-speed internet on January 7.

They will be among more than 100 government officials, including a panel of governors featuring Govs. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and FCC commissioner Nathan Simington.

In addition to in-person attendance, CES is offering a digital-only option, though it points out that “nothing can quite recreate the excitement, connections and spontaneity the in person attendees will experience.” 

Future, parent company of Next TV, B+C and Multichannel News, publishes the official CES Daily. ■

The Cable Center said Tuesday that its 23rd annual Cable Hall of Fame celebration, slated for Oct. 20, will be held virtually.

“After much thought and consideration, The Cable Center decided that it was best to host our Cable Hall of Fame event virtually at this time,” The Cable Center president and CEO Jana Henthorn said in a press release. “We are eager to gather in spirit with the industry on October 20, and finally have the opportunity to celebrate our honorees.”

The celebration will air on C-SPAN 3 at 8p.m. ET and be available for view simultaneously on C-SPAN.org. The program will also be featured in the C-SPAN Video Library and available for on demand viewing immediately following the event.

The Cable Center had hoped to hold part of the celebration at its regular venue -- The Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City -- allowing those that couldn’t make the trip to participate virtually. Now it appears that the entire offering will be held online. 

The Cable Hall of Fame selected seven industry leaders in March 2020 for this year’s class:  Baker Media CEO Bridget Baker; former Charter Communications EVP IT and Engineering Jim Blackley; Urban One founder and chairwoman Cathy Hughes; TV One chairman and CEO and Urban One CEO Alfred C. Liggins III; Cable Pioneer Jeff Marcus; Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson; and WarnerMedia News & Sports president and president CNN Worldwide Jeff Zucker.

The Bresnan Ethics in Business Award will also be presented to Ted Turner, Environmentalist and Philanthropist, during the Cable Hall of Fame celebration.

“This year has proven that our industry is extremely resilient and creative, and the Cable Hall of Fame will be no different,” Michael Willner, president and CEO of Penthera Partners and chairman of The Cable Center’s Board of Directors, said in a press release. “We have some fun surprises in store as we roll out the red carpet virtually for our honorees and we are thrilled that C-SPAN has agreed to air this engaging celebration. We can’t wait to induct our 2020 class and hope that everyone will support this must-see event by not only viewing but also through our unique sponsorship opportunities.”

The Cable Center is still confirming its plans for 2021 honorees. For more information on the celebration, visit www.cablehalloffame.com.

CES, the annual giant technology conference that draws television and advertising executives to Las Vegas, will be going digital in January, the Consumer Technology Association said.

The virus has canceled a series of industry events, including the network upfront presentations, the NAB Show, IBC and the SCTE-ISBE Cable Tec Expo. Still, CES, which reported 175,000 total attendees in 2019 in Las Vegas, is so massive that the conversion to digital seemed to cause an exceptional stir.

“With the growing global health concerns about the spread of COVID-19, it is not possible to safely convene tens of thousands of people in Las Vegas in early January 2021 to meet and do business in person,” the CTA said.

The group said that the digital CES 2021 during the first week of January will offer “a highly personalized experience” that will include keynotes and conferences, product showcases and meeting and networking.

“Technology has helped us all work, learn and connect during the coronavirus pandemic, and it has presented real solutions to help solve complex global challenges. We recognize that, particularly in these uncertain times, it is the partnerships of some of the most creative minds that bring the best solutions to life,” the CTA said.

The National Association of Broadcasters said the annual NAB Show in Las Vegas is still "all systems go" for April 18-22 amid international travel concerns. 

The association put out an announcement (below) in response to questions from attendees and exhibitors in light of the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona last week due to the coronavirus. 

NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said the show is absolutely still on and, in fact, had one of its best sales weeks last week in terms of floor exhibition space. 

He said they are taking "all precautions" to ensure the safety of attendees. Wharton said attendance is tracking on par with last year. 

Below is the announcement NAB made to reassure attendees: 

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), organizer of NAB Show, affirmed the 2020 NAB Show is set to take place as planned, April 18 – 22 in Las Vegas. The association is closely monitoring COVID-19, commonly known as coronavirus, and is prepared to devote whatever resources necessary to ensure a safe and productive NAB Show experience. 

NAB Show is the premier event driving the evolution of media and entertainment. It is an engine for commerce and a critical launchpad for products and services expected to revolutionize the business. The convention’s 1,600 exhibitors and 90,000 attendees rely on the annual NAB Show to raise their profile and meet business goals. 

While the NAB stands firm in its commitment to hold the convention as planned, the health and safety of attendees and participants are NAB’s top priority. To that end, NAB is dedicated to providing rapid responses and assistance in support of the global NAB Show community’s participation plans. The event management team has launched a COVID-19 resource page on the NAB Show website, where updates will be provided. 

Currently, NAB is: 

1. Adhering to all guidance and recommended safety measures issued by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as state and local health organizations. 

2. Working with the Las Vegas Convention Center, the airport authority, and area hotels and resorts to coordinate appropriate safety procedures.

3. Following CDC recommendations and protocols for heightened levels of cleanliness at event facilities.

4. Making accommodations and actively encouraging attendees to take common-sense precautions and follow CDC guidelines to prevent the spread of illness.

5. Ensuring medical care is readily accessible to address immediate health concerns.

6. Working with China-based exhibitors and registered attendees to evaluate options for those unable to attend due to travel restrictions. Of note, NAB Show attendance from China, although growing, represented less than 2 percent of total registered attendees in 2019.

NAB is taking COVID-19 very seriously and is fully invested and prepared to host a successful NAB Show in Las Vegas. The city of Las Vegas is maintaining rigorous cleanliness and safety standards throughout public spaces, resorts and meeting facilities, and hosts successful trade events daily. Meanwhile, NAB Show has experienced an uptick in exhibit sales, attendee registration and hotel bookings in recent weeks, and conference program speakers are confirmed daily.