Vegas, here I come! April 6-11 will see NAB come to life (again). How can I miss the biggest exhibition and conference of our industry? 1 million+ square feet of exhibit space, 1,700+ companies and more than 100K potential attendees from different communities: after 96 years (yes, the first edition was in 1923), NAB Show remains the place to be when it comes to anything involving media, entertainment and technology.

Technology is growing fast and the amount of people that have access to the internet is booming with 367 million new users in the last year alone and more (of course) is yet to come. GlobalWebIndex reported that 92% of internet users watch video online every month, which adds up to be about 4 billion people consuming video content online.

Video doesn’t stop growing. If we compare what happened during an internet minute in 2018 and what is happening today, we can see that in just one year, Netflix grew its hours watched by 161%, going from 266,000 hours to 694,444. Impressive and unstoppable, not that it should be stopped, since this reflects a global trend that sees time spent on linear TV decreasing and time spent watching tv online increasing. NAB is promoting their 2019 event by describing it as “The place where stories originate, are edited, manipulated, delivered and consumed” and the claim is backed up by multiple meetings, internal events and the conferences itself where people will discuss hot topics impacting the industry, such as ATSC 3.0 and 5G, streaming and advertising.

The need to speak about the future of broadcasting is high, as much as is the need to understand how technology providers, like MainStreaming, can truly be of help when it comes to delivering the best quality of experience to final users while they watch live or on-demand content.