Twenty Years Of CES Adventures
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 1/8/2002
This month marks the 20th anniversary of my first Consumer Electronics Show and my first visit to Las Vegas. When I realized this during my preparation for the 2002 show, I felt it somehow couldn't be possible. It seems like yesterday. Then I looked at some CE trade papers from that era and I quickly knew how long ago it really was. Yet the charm and pace of this industry for those of us lucky enough to be part of it, or like me cover it, is that things change so quickly it always seems like yesterday.
I first became aware of the phrase "consumer electronics" in a weekly trade newspaper I had just joined in 1978, Electronic News. That paper's readership still consists of purchasing agents, manufacturers, defense contractors, and the like. But it used to have a one-page section on CE.
When I thought of electronics I thought of turntables, color TVs, audio cassette decks, and something new in the late '70s a friend of mine called a "VHS Betamax." Those were items I could buy at Rabson's, JGE, Friendly Frost, Crazy Eddie or Newmark & Lewis in New York City. Those products were far more interesting and entertaining than the ICs, semiconductors, transistors, printed circuit boards and mainframe computers that were Electronic News' bread and butter. I desperately wanted to write that section of the paper, but alas, never got the opportunity.
I finally got a crack at covering this crazy business through the backdoor in January 1982, with a then well-known monthly trade publication covering the toy business. I had been on the staff for a few months and our publisher wanted someone to check out "electronic games" that were beginning to be sold at toy stores. So at the last minute I was put on a plane and after a whirlwind Republic Airlines flight, making planned stops in Des Moines and Denver, I made it to Vegas and CES.
That Winter CES (there were two-a-year back then) became famous for the battle royale in the emerging video game industry between Atari and Mattel, with Texas Instruments and Commodore Business Systems showing, respectively, the 99/4A and VIC 20 PCs.
As I walked around the old Las Vegas Convention Center trying to cover these categories, amid the glitz and drone, along with the wonder of seeing new technologies, the show amazed me. I think you CES veterans know what I mean, because over the years certain things haven't changed.
There are the battling booth presentations of dancers and singers who are, in terms of geography or talent, nowhere near Broadway. The cacophony of sound from thousands of color TVs, audio systems, phones, karaoke machines, et al, demand your attention, all at once, NOW! The cool, dry Vegas air intermingled with second-hand cigarette smoke and a preponderance of meetings – which include late-night client dinners – still give many scratchy eyes and "desert throat" 48 hours after arriving. The smell of what the Convention Center caterers call food wafts around the arena. The constant throbbing of your feet begins to dog you by the third day as you trudge from booth to booth through the constantly moving crowds. A once-in-a-lifetime chance sighting, or if you're lucky an introduction, with a favorite celebrity sometimes occurs. (Talking baseball with Mickey Mantle and shaking hands with Cary Grant are two of my favorites.)
All of that, and more, is just a small part of the CES experience.
Call me a masochist, but by the time I got back home I was hooked, and a few weeks later I was happy that our publisher wanted to publish a new quarterly called Electronics For Kids, which marked my first opportunity to edit a publication. It debuted in Chicago during Summer CES in June.
On the opening morning of the show, I woke up to the now-traditional "THUMP" of trade journals and dailies that are delivered outside hotel room doors before dawn. I picked up the daily papers covering the show, frantically paging through to see if I had missed anything on video games in my new venture. Paging through the competing publications that morning I calmed myself down by saying, "At least I don't have to edit a daily paper here." Little did I know that eight years later at the same show I'd begin editing Home Furnishings Daily's first CES Daily, and in 1994 I'd start editing the TWICE CES Official Daily.
It is the surprises that occur during CES and in the CE industry, both welcome and otherwise, that makes this a fascinating subject to cover, at least for this reporter. It is the dynamic change and innovation in CE technology that links the shows of 1982 to 2002, and beyond.
I've covered other industries, and probably you have worked in other industries, that in comparison are as dull as dishwater. I clearly agree with the sentiments of the late Art Levis, a veteran journalist who covered the consumer electronics industry with distinction for many years. Once, when accepting an industry award for his work, I've been told he said, "Everyday when I get up I thank God that I'm not writing about the corrugated box industry."
Amen. Have a great CES and a safe, healthy and profitable New Year.
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