Las Vegas: The international broadcast industry is experiencing tough economic times, and it is going to take an accelerated adoption of digital television to bring business around. This was the message at NAB2002, the annual gathering of the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters and the world’s largest electronic media show.

Since last year’s conference, the interactive sector has not pulled out of the doldrums of the dot-com stock crash, and innovations in the broadcast world have been put on hold following an economic downturn worsened by 9/11.

By the same token, U.S. broadcasting’s coverage of the terrorist acts perpetrated against the nation and its subsequent response was hailed as ‘our finest hour’ by NAB president and CEO Eddie Fritts in the event’s opening ceremony. He noted that four times more U.S. viewers tuned in to free over-the-air networks than cable stations. ‘Free over-the-air serves the public good,’ he said.

NAB2002 comes on the heels of chairman Michael Powell’s call to U.S. cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and manufacturers to voluntarily ramp up their efforts to speed up the lagging switchover to digital TV. The industry was supposed to be well on its way to digital by May 2003, with the entire switchover complete by 2006, but that has been delayed due to reluctance on the part of broadcasters to invest in the necessary infrastructure, a host of regulatory concerns, lack of a common DTV format standard and little in the way of revenue models.

The Canadian industry, meanwhile, is playing a wait-and-see game and is assumed to be switching over 18 to 24 months after the Americans. To foster DTV south of the border, Powell is asking U.S. nets to air high-definition, innovative multicasting and interactive TV during half of their primetime schedules by next year. He also expects cable systems to carry at no extra cost several digital broadcasts or programming services during primetime and TV manufacturers to include digital tuners in all their sets by 2006.

And it is evident from NAB2002 that the industry needs to grow DTV quickly.

To the many companies in the satellite, streaming, telecommunications, broadcast, production and post sectors that have hitched their wagons to the digital revolution, the switchover can’t come soon enough.

While NAB2002 panelists debated the piracy issues inherent in digital transmission and the devastating impact of DTV subscribers being able to ‘ad skip,’manufacturers on the gigantic showroom floors of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo Center had to contend with smaller crowds than usual. Attendance at NAB2002 was down from the previous year – by more than 20%, according to one source – and some manufacturers glumly acknowledged that business at their booths was light.

Nonetheless, companies were more aggressive than usual in terms of grabbing attendee eyeballs. For example, Toronto-based software manufacturer Alias|Wavefront bought a large banner outside the entrance to the Sands proclaiming that Maya Complete, its solution for 3D animation and FX artists, was now available at the reduced price of US$1,999.

But not everybody is playing the price-slashing game. Montreal-based competitor Discreet grabbed attention by having Academy Award-nominated director David Lynch perform an FX demonstration at its booth.

Discreet representatives said the company did not want to alienate longtime customers by dramatically lowering the cost of its flagship systems. Rather, its new software versions are aimed at allowing customers to maximize their initial investments by being more open to the various formats in the global market and offering better integration with other Discreet systems. Nonetheless, the opportunity to find good bargains in hardware and software was a recurring theme at this year’s show.

-www.nab.org