Happy Monday War & Peaceniks. Let’s Advance To Go!
I spent the last week in Vegas at CES 2023. Unlike last year, when Omnicron 22 kept nearly everyone away, this year’s CES was back near pre-Covid levels (around 80% of 2019’s height). Drinks were flowing, but the drink of the conference was a spicy cocktail full of desire for normalcy mixed with anxiety over what’s next.
The hot tech-topics were Cars (the “smart auto” will be a mack truck-sized tech story this year); Food Tech (cuisine tech will be four star sector of CES for the next few years); and Health Tech (look for the “smart toilet” to become a must-have in-home diagnostic tool). There were a lot of cool new tech toys on display, but one of the dirty little secrets of CES is that the hottest action takes place outside of the convention center (and I’m not referring to the fact that the Adult VIdeo Expo takes place in Vegas simultaneously).
On the Strip, on the panels, at the dinners and over drinks, the main conversation was not about specific tech but rather about “what happens now?” Across the Media and Tech continuum conventional wisdom has come to a realization that, in fact, right now, there is no conventional wisdom.
Big tech has definitely peaked. Modern Media has matured past its sell by date. And, despite their massive gravitational pull, even the Trillion Dollar Death Stars seem to be lost in space. Amazon kicked off the convention by floating a trial balloon about spinning off their sports into a stand-alone app (you can read my open letter to Amazon’s CEO, begging him to not do that). Apple had rotten news about iPhones on many fronts. Microsoft’s big move with Activision remains in limbo. And, after years of wild innovations on TVs, all the CTV players seemed to have entirely given up trying to WOW users, in favor of focusing on, y’know, making TVs.
In Media & Tech CES has long been a bellwether for big trends in the year ahead. If that is true of CES 2023, then this year’s biggest trend will be:
The Big Reboot.
Across the spectrum of entertainment, technology, content, and Media, there is a clear and widely-accepted reality that almost everything needs rethinking. From the way we interact with consumers, to the way we run our businesses, to the way we invest in new ideas, to the people we have in the room when we make decisions - everything needs to be, and is, on the table now. The acceptance of the need for change - real, substantive change - has never been higher. The issue: No one really knows what “change” means in this current ferkacte moment in time.
Yet, if we don’t truly know precisely how things will change, there was a pretty consistent acknowledgment across disciplines at CES about what in our ecosystem needs to change. Here are the FOUR BIG TRENDS FROM CES 2023 that (IMHO) will pump the hearts of Media and Tech in the year ahead:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Media War & Peace to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.