LAS VEGAS: Nearly 84,000 people that registered for the broadcast confab in the desert showed up this year by the dawn of Day No. 3. The tally was down around 23 percent from last year’s, but pretty good considering the state of the economy, NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said.
“With two days remaining, the NAB Show has been a phenomenal success by any measure in an otherwise challenging economy,” said NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton. “We appreciate the strong support of both exhibitors and attendees who continue to make the NAB Show the most important annual event for the electronic media marketplace.”
Last year’s convention drew around 105,000 folks, or the entire population of Wichita Falls, Texas; in ’07, it was a gang-busting 108,000, like the island of Maui. But times were a bit better and travel budgets existed. This year, the casino floors were lonely during the week and the hotels nearly were giving away rooms. One journalist from Washington, D.C. said he paid $100 for a room at the extravagant Wynn resort.
International attendance remained strong this year, with 23,232 registered folks coming to Las Vegas from beyond U.S. borders. It was a 14 percent drop from last year’s record number of 27,000 international NAB attendees. The contingent in both years represented more than one-quarter of the total number of folks who descended on the Las Vegas Convention Center to check out the latest in audio-video technology.
Though legions of journalists have been laid off from cash-strapped media outlets, their ranks remain strong at NAB this year, down only 4 percent to 1,246. There were 1,296 of us here last year. We drank 4,160 gallons of coffee, consumed 10,004 flagons of beer, ate 486,000 shrimp, lied to editors about missed deadlines 3,846 times, lost a collective $6 at the tables and went home tired. -- Deborah D. McAdams
