NAB Show In Vegas Officially Canceled

National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith has alerted members and exhibitors that the canceled 2020 NAB Show will not be rescheduled, but will instead be reimagined as a “digital” platform dubbed NAB Show Express, which will launch in April, when the physical show would have been held in Las Vegas.

Smith told C-SPAN canceling the NAB Show due to coronavirus concerns was a “great injury” to the association, but a decision it had to make. He also called it an “agonizing” decision, the economic impact of which — 100,000 attendees, one million feet of exhibit space — he was still calculating. Smith said that if the pandemic wanes he still hopes to have NAB Show 2021 next April.

He also said that this April the association would launch a “digital experience” called NAB Show Express for exhibitors and attendees, and that the October NAB Show New York would be enhanced.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.