MIAMI BEACH – NATPE CEO Rod Perth and executive board chairman Jordan Levin delivered a glowingly positive review of the three-day market and conference, which concluded Thursday afternoon.
There were no figures on attendance (somewhere around 6,000) or exhibitors (more than 300) but Perth reported about 67 countries were represented; and more importantly a wide range of segments of the television business including reality TV, syndication, advertisers and international buyers and sellers.
“We set out objectives,” said Perth. “I must tell you I’m very pleased about how we’re achieving those objectives. This has become the place people know they have to attend because every sector of the business is represented at the highest levels. “
What once had been a market for TV syndication, they said, has widened out to include other aspects of the rapidly changing business including digital, reality TV, streaming and branding.
Levin said the market and conference “felt like it came together, like it had soul, an energy, an emotion, a purpose we had always hope for, that we aspire to.”
Levin said in past years there were walls between different parts of the TV industry; and people who came from Hollywood and complained they were seeing the same people they could see at home.
Levin said that wasn’t the case this year. “Those walls have broken down in large part because of changes in our business,” said Levin. “This was the first year to me that felt like everyone was buying into being here and understood the value of being together. It made sense.”
NATPE is already set to return to the Fontainebleau Hotel again on similar dates next January. “Our plan,” said Perth, “is to stay here as long as we can.”
