Has NATPE Finally Reached Its Nadir?

What if someone gave a big TV conference in Las Vegas, and nobody cared?

Well, it seems to have happened with this year’s NATPE conference, which concludes today at the Mandalay Bay. For those who don’t know, NATPE stands for National Association of Television Programming Executives, and though that title paints rather a broad brush, the annual NATPE show has traditionally been where syndicators go to secure distribution for shows like “Dr. Phil” and reruns of “Friends” — or announce deals that have previously been struck.

To look at the NATPE Web site, this year’s show looked like any other, promising to mix Las Vegas schmaltz with Hollywood, as a bunch of badly-dressed station managers took it all in with awe. It promised a Mad Men Live Revue for only $20 per ticket at the MGM Grand, an LG Celebrity Chef Kitchen on the show floor and, according to a press release, “a special performance by the Season Two Champions of MTV’s critically acclaimed ‘Randy Jackson Presents: America’s Best Dance Crew’ SUPER CR3W.” (No, I hadn’t heard of that show either.)

But random online commentary and synopses of the confab from major media covering the conference tell a different story: of a show slowly losing its raison d’etre, with beleaguered station managers barely in attendance, and the big news being that Marie Osmond’s new talk show has “cleared” the New York and Los Angeles markets.  It’s not just the economy that’s seriously wounding NATPE; it’s been the case for some time now that many of the shows that do clear a lot of markets have done so long before the show floor opens. The failing economy mixes in additional angst with the glitz. Said one of my Facebook friends: “Back in NYC after a stint at NATPE. The tv industry is in flux to put it mildly.”

Mediaweek’s Marc Berman reported that ” … rumors, once again, are running rampant about NATPE coming to an eventual conclusion.” That’s a polite way of saying it might be time to kill the thing off.

And Mediaweek sister pub Hollywood Reporter really hit the nail on the head in saying: “The 46th edition of the NATPE trade show will, if the TV business regains its footing, go down as a depressing blip on the radar — or be remembered as the straw that broke the camel’s back and ends the market as we know it.”

On the one hand, rumors of NATPE’s demise have been going on for years. On the other hand, we’re now in the midst of a game-changing economic downturn that calls into question many long-held business traditions, from the viability of printing news on paper to flying thousands of people to Las Vegas for a trade show. If this economy doesn’t kill NATPE, I suppose nothing will.