By Holland Cooke
Consultant
What a week! And what it all means to radio? Simple. Matter-enough to earn a place on the landscape described by Consumer Technology Association VP/research Steve Koenig. This briefing alone was worth the trip. My short-version notes of six bases he tagged…
Enterprise Technology Innovation
- “Stubborn inflation and rising interest rates.” Yet, historically…
- Tough times yield innovation, much of which “comes from the smallest startups.” During The Great Recession of 2008-2009, we got 4G mobile broadband, smartphones, and tablets and notebook computers. As a 2023 recession looms: 5G, autonomous systems, connected intelligence, quantum computing.
- 5G is “upgrading the global economy.”
- While “supply chains remain vulnerable, chip inventories are rising.”
Metaverse/Web 3.0
- “The Metaverse is closer than you think. It’s the next generation of the Internet.”
- “Like the internet in the 1990s, a real trend,” not just the crude video game graphics we’ve seen in Meta’s rollout.
- Think “shared experiences,” not hard to conceptualize after two years of Zoom.
Transportation/Mobility
- EV
- Self-driving trucks: Vital, because of the labor shortage. The USA has “a shortage of 10 million workers.”
- “Screenification of the in-vehicle experience”
- “Cars are becoming marketplaces.” Tell your dashboard you want a latte, and it’s waiting at Starbucks drive-through
- “Not just land-based.” Robot ships.
Continued below
Health Technology
- Digital therapeutics: “You will feel like Dr. McCoy” from Star Trek.
- Remote monitoring and 24/7 virtual visits. NOT a substitute for your doc.’ These will be “tools for in-between visits.”
- Mental health: Monitoring depression
- Fitness tech: connected exercise and sports equipment
- “Regular-looking eyeglasses that will predict epileptic seizures.”
Sustainability
- Smart grid
- Supply chain
- Ag/food tech: drones, soil sensors, farming robots, satellite/5G connections
- Clean air/water
- Alternative energy
- Minimizing packaging
- Recycling technology
- Reduced use of rare earth metals.
Gaming and Services
- 2022: 164 million USA gamers, age 13-64
- Why so much time gaming? “Increasingly it’s about connection and socialization.”
- “Consumers are sticking-with” services adopted during shutdown.
- “31 cents of every tech dollar are attributable to services.”
The most-radio-pertinent dialogue we heard at CES was the session “The Disruption: Media, Platforms & Advertising.” Intended to be a broader discussion, it kept coming-back to “audio” and podcasting, as I summarized in Friday’s column. If you missed it, it’s here. And here are my notes from the entire event, which is a real whack-on-the-side-of-the-head to those of us in radio.
Holland Cooke (HollandCooke.com) is the author of “Multiply Your Podcast Subscribers, Without Buying Clicks,” available from Talkers books; and “Spot-On: Commercial Copy Points That Earned The Benjamins,” a FREE download; and the E-book and FREE on-air radio features “Inflation Hacks: Save Those Benjamins.” HC is a consultant working at the intersection of broadcasting and the Internet. Follow him on Twitter @HollandCooke