Me, CES 2018, and Future-Type Stuff

You wanna know what I saw at CES? Oh, it was spectacular. There were adorable robots and smart refrigerators and, yes, we're finally getting jetpacks and flying cars! It was amazing! Also, that last part about the jetpacks and flying cars is a lie. And I saw robots and smart refrigerators and plenty of electric autonomous concept cars you'll never, ever drive, but that wasn't what was interesting to me about the show.

That's how it always goes. Most people love seeing the drones -- there are always a lot of those in the South Hall -- and marvel at the wearables and laugh at the goofy Brand-X stuff and accept at face value the industry's latest attempt at selling you what you didn't know you wanted. (This year, they're back to Virtual Reality headsets. I'm sure they'll be as successful in selling you that as they were in selling you 3-D TVs. Also, they haven't yet gotten the message that you aren't going to buy another Fitbit now that the one you got for Christmas two years ago has spent one year and eleven months in the drawer, but that's good, because there's still value in a health monitor if they ultimately get it right.) The real story, however, is not nearly as fun, but it's way more important.

You know that we're going to get self-driving cars sooner than later. You know that companies like Panasonic are moving away from selling you TVs to working on the operating systems and infrastructure (especially battery power) for smart city technology and transportation. And you know that the industry, which had been working on voice control and artificial intelligence, was sort of blindsided when the first really successful and effective gadget in that category came from a non-electronics company, Amazon.

But all of that is part of what I think the main takeaway is for the electronics industry: it's not about the gadgets themselves, it's about how the public's desires and expectations are now that they'll be able to go anywhere and just ask for things and get them instantly. It's... well, it's like "Star Trek," only instead of focusing on Captain Kirk using a flip-phone-style Communicator or pressing a badge on his shirt to give a command, you focus on the very idea of saying "Computer, do this" and it does that. It's why the incorporation of Alexa and Google Assistant and Cortana (and Samsung's Bixby, a me-too voice AI that's part of an every-device-working-together-everywhere strategy) into practically everything is so significant. Last year, you saw car makers like Ford and BMW hurriedly announcing deals to use Alexa or Cortana for their dashboard systems; now, everyone's doing it for everything. You'll get it in washers and dryers, in smart-home systems, in your car, in your bathroom, in hotels, at the office, everywhere. It will know who you are and what you want, and if you think that's creepy and privacy-invasive, it is, but that horse is out of the barn and both the horse and the barn are Amazon devices now. And it's not really about voice control so much as it is that, finally, people will be getting what they want, where they want it, when they want it, and it'll all be friction free. Taking the friction out of everything from shopping to transportation to entertainment is what the future's about.

And this has a lot to do with the radio industry. In one way, the AI devices are radio's savior; after all, you can now just ask Alexa for a station and you'll get it. In another, it's a station owner's worst nightmare, because while people CAN get your station, they can also get music or podcasts that aren't attached to a license and call letters and location. Are people going to ask Alexa for their local radio station when they can ask for Taylor Swift or Alternative Music or My Spotify Playlist? Are they going to ask for the local talk or sports station or Rush Limbaugh or a podcast about the local teams directly? That's a problem for radio as an industry. It's great for content producers who don't need a radio station as an intermediary, but there's the pesky problem of monetization. Assuming that'll come at some point sooner than later, the whole field of audio entertainment is going to be different. And it means that everyone in the field is going to have to be better at marketing and promotion as well as content creation, because that's what will get people to ask for you. If there's a lesson I learned from CES 2018, it's that whatever you thought your job and your future was going to be, you're going to have to adjust that vision. Nobody promised you things wouldn't change. They're changing. The time to adapt is now.

Oh, and the power outage was interesting. But that's another column. (Actually, that was yesterday's podcast.)

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Want more of me talking about CES? I talked about it on Peter Bell's show on ABC Radio Perth in Australia -- hear that here (it's about 30 minutes in) -- and on Matt Perrault's "Pushing the Odds" on SB Nation Radio -- you can find that here. I also taped a talk with BJ and Migs of KISW/Seattle for their "BJ's Geek Nation" podcast -- when that posts, you'll find it here. See, I do interviews about practically anything, because I talk a lot. A LOT. If you want me to do that for you, email me. I rarely say no.

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Somehow, I managed to keep Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, updated throughout the logistical nightmare that is CES. You'll find all the stories by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And there's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts. We'll get everything rolling again in the coming weeks. Recovery is underway.

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And that talk about your future? I will be talking about exactly that with people who are already living in that post-radio future at the Worldwide Radio Summit in Hollywood May 2-4. You will want to see that. Register here. Tom Leykis doing subscription streaming, Steve Goldstein consulting podcasts and working on Alexa skills, Rob Greenlee running a podcast empire and podcasting himself, Gina Juliano in the world of apps. Hope I'll see you there....

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
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