As we cope with the changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 NAB Show has become NAB Show Express and the 2020 NAB Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology (BEIT) Conference will become a Show component called BEIT Express. Selected presentations from the original BEIT Conference program will be presented in a linear video channel over two days, May 13-14, 2020, and these videos will remain available on demand throughout the spring and summer.
In keeping with the “Express” theme of the online conference, BEIT Express papers presented on video will be no more than 15 minutes in length. In some cases, a more in-depth slide deck will also be provided by the paper authors for attendees’ further exploration, and these slides will also remain available online through the Summer at the BEIT Express site.
Beyond the content originally planned for the 2020 NAB Show, some additional sessions produced especially for NAB Show Express will also be featured. Much of this bonus content will address the new realities faced by broadcasters in these unprecedented times.
All these resources will be available for free to anyone who registers for NAB Show Express. Registration is now open here. You’ll need that free registration for NAB Show Express to access the online content, regardless of whether you had previously registered for NAB Show.
Program Development and Partners
As with the BEIT Conference at the regular NAB Show, the BEIT Express program will feature papers selected by a group of senior engineers from NAB member companies – the BEIT Conference Committee, listed below.
| Roz Clark (2020 Chairman) | Cox Media Group |
| Winston Caldwell | Fox Corporation |
| Bill Davis | Capitol Broadcasting Company |
| Jim DeChant | News-Press & Gazette Broadcasting |
| Mike Kelly | E.W. Scripps Company |
| Marcy Lefkovitz | Disney / ABC Television Group |
| Jason Ornellas | Bonneville International |
| Glenn Reitmeier | GlennReitmeierTV LLC |
| Steve Shultis | New York Public Radio |
| Glynn Walden | Entercom Communications Corp. |
| John L. Poray | Society of Broadcast Engineers |
| Tom Mikkelsen | Consultant, SBE |
The committee initially suggested a set of topics for the 2020 BEIT Conference program, which were posted in last summer’s call for papers. Subsequently, the committee reviewed the proposals submitted from across the industry and around the world, and selected the papers scheduled to appear in the conference program. Most of these papers will remain in the BEIT Express collection.
In addition, NAB Show Express content will include material prepared by partner organizations such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE), the Broadcast Technology Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-BTS), the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), the Society of Cable Television Engineers (SCTE) and the Association of Public Radio Engineers (APRE).
Something for Everyone
The broad range of timely subjects should provide papers of interest to all who attend NAB Show Express.
Topics to be covered at the 2020 BEIT Conference include Next Generation TV, conversion to IP, over-the-top (OTT) TV, artificial intelligence applications, 5G technology, cloud applications, ultra HD and advanced advertising technologies. Presentations are also planned for emerging radio technologies, cybersecurity, broadcast facility design, new workflows, advanced emergency alerting, Next Gen TV audio, new technologies for sports coverage, RF spectrum issues and the TV repack.
You can peruse BEIT Conference content at your leisure via video on demand over the next few months, or lean back and have BEIT content presented to you in linear fashion on the BEIT Express channel May 13-14, 2020. Content presentation will begin at 12 p.m. ET each day and run until 8 p.m. ET. Then, the full eight hours of BEIT Express content will rerun twice each day to provide a full 24 hours of content for convenient viewing in various time zones around the world.
Many of the papers presented at BEIT Express are also available in written form via the Proceedings of the 2020 BEIT Conference, which will be published May 13, 2020. The Proceedings will be available for the first time in an online form, and can be purchased as a complete set of papers or à la carte as individual papers. You’ll find the Proceedings at a new page on the PILOT website starting May 13.
We hope you can take advantage of this virtual presentation of broadcast technology content at BEIT Express, premiering May 13-14, 2020, at nabshowexpress.com.