Through the Wire

CES Isn’t Only Game in Vegas, Sadly

It will be hurry-up-and-wait time in Las Vegas this week, as more than 183,000 conventioneers hit town for the annual International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center and Sands Expo Center (150,000 for CES and 33,000 for the Adult Entertainment Expo at the latter venue).

Be prepared for lengthy taxi queues wherever you go. One end-around is the monorail, which runs from the convention center to major hotels along the strip, to its terminus at the MGM Grand ($5 a ride, $15 for a day pass, $40 for a three-day pass). The station is upstairs at the convention center and it operates from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Also, if you plan on being there through Friday, take an umbrella. Rain is predicted.

At least CES attendees know it’s going to be crowded. There are actually a few smaller meetings scheduled around town. We’d hate to be part of the AON Insurance meeting at Treasure Island (250 strong), only to find out it’s the same time as CES.

By comparison, the town will be positively sleepy, convention wise, the week of Jan. 14. The National Association of Television Programming Executives will draw 8,000 attendees to its annual meeting at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, which appears to be biggest convention in town. They’ll be sharing cabs with an SAP Global Sales conference (5,500 at the MGM Grand), 3,000 off-road enthusiasts (Sands Expo Center), 1,000 members of the American Nurses Association (Flamingo) and 450 members of the International Cemetery and Funeral Association, among other meetings.

Regular or Premium With That Wireless TV Show?

One perennial favorite at CES: Video in cars. At this week’s show, Daimler Chrysler’s research group will demonstrate a Mercedes-Benz R500 streaming live high-definition video from a mobile device to the station wagon’s built-in entertainment system using Intel’s ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless technology.

The setup, according to the companies, will let R500 owners stream HD video from a handheld mobile device to factory-installed monitors in the headrests for middle- and third-row passengers. UWB technology provides short-term wireless connectivity of 480 Megabits per second or more, according to Intel.

DaimlerChrysler hopes “to enhance the comfort and convenience features for all our passengers,” Dr. Wieland Holfelder, chief technology officer of the company’s Research, Engineering and Design North America division, said in announcing the demo. The video streaming system, apparently, is targeted at the lucrative whiny toddler demographic.

Meanwhile, there’s other auto-video news in store from Dresser Wayne, an Austin, Texas-based supplier of “integrated solutions to the global retail petroleum industry.” (That would be gas pumps to you and me.)

Dresser Wayne plans to demonstrate the Ovation iX fuel pump, which is outfitted with a Bluetooth wireless transmitter. The pump, according to the company, will be able to stream movies, songs and other media files to Bluetooth-enabled handsets, like a cell phone. Dresser Wayne will show multimedia streaming into Ford Motor’s Lincoln Navigator via Bluetooth.

The company’s pitch for the pump: “This provides both retailers and consumers a prime opportunity to make the most of the four minutes the average person spends filling up their cars at the pump by shopping, getting weather or news updates, or even downloading movies!”

Sure beats watching the pump’s price-counter zoom alarmingly into the double digits.

Big Apple Hails Bullcabs: No Bucks, Free Ride!

How do you get a New Yorker’s attention? First, start with synthetic cowhide, so you won’t anger animal activists, and then you hunt down five decommissioned cabs.

Those are some of the steps Versus took to conduct its attention-getting Big Apple stunt last week, where “bullcabs,” covered in 225 square feet of fake hair and bearing foam rubber horns, roamed the streets. The promotion garnered attention for the Manhattan stop of the Professional Bull Riders tour at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 6 that will be televised by the network.

Versus couldn’t shrink-wrap cabs. That’s illegal, explained network senior vice president Bill Bergofin. So it got five former taxis and asked teams of employees to give up part of their holidays to spend two days per car, dressing the vehicles for the stunt. They hired professional drivers and, as long as they gave free rides to people, the bullcabs weren’t technically cabs.

Bergofin said the network wanted a promotion that was “a touch playful,” while remarkable.

The first day they were on the streets, network president Gavin Harvey had to travel within the city to a meeting. “Take one of the bulls,” Bergofin advised.

“People were stopping on the street, taking pictures, knocking on the windows to see what it was all about,” Bergofin related.

He says the bullcabs have proved very popular: “These bulls are gonna be tired!”

Another Seasonal Oddity: Oxygen’s Early Upfront

The mild weather seemed almost certain to break the 115-year-old record for the latest snowfall (Jan. 6, 1892) in the New York area. But that wasn’t the only season that seemed out of sorts: Oxygen Media plans to kick off the annual upfront action via its first-ever presentation on Jan 23. at Cipriani at 9 a.m.

Typically, the run of cable presentations don’t commence until February, with the bulk being held in March and April, before the broadcasters put their best programming feet forward in May.

Why’s the women’s-targeted network breaking the seal so early?

“We’ve hit the 70-million subscriber mark and our sales revenue has exceeded $100 million. It’s time to step up to our size,” president and chief operating officer Lisa Gersh said. “We’ve had enormous growth in a relatively flat marketplace — and we want the advertising community to know about it. We want to get out there early, and stress that in this scattered market, the selling season should be 52 weeks out of the year.”

Especially when there’s no snow on the street.