LAS VEGAS
The PBS Technology Conference will mark its 30th anniversary this month in Las Vegas, preceding the opening of exhibits at NAB2007, and conjoining events with the start of the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference (BEC)--a synergistic scheduling strategy that allows public TV engineers to make the most of their annual spring visits. As many veteran public TV engineers can tell you, the annual event--Tech.Con.07--has come a long way in three decades.
MEETINGS BEGAN AT KLVX
(click thumbnail)Marty VodovozIn 1976, a small group of engineers made up the PBS Engineering Committee, now called the PBS Enterprise Technology Advisory Committee (ETAC). Taking shape only a few years after public broadcasting was nationally supported and federally funded, the committee began to meet (usually in the fall) in a former school building, which was then home to PBS station KLVX in Las Vegas. The committee's agenda usually encompassed one day, sometimes a little more.
"We had this small 40-by-30-foot TV studio and that's where the committee first met," said Marty Vodovoz, whose technical career at KLVX began right out of college in 1971. "They had maybe 30 people, including the panel and everybody." When the station moved to new facilities, the annual committee meetings followed, for the most part. The get-togethers were not always held in Las Vegas.
In 1986, it took place at public television station KERA-TV in Dallas, the location of the NAB convention that year. And it gathered at Georgia Public TV in Atlanta in 1990, as the NAB conference was held in that city then. (NAB did not designate Las Vegas its exclusive convention site until the early 1990s.)
Meanwhile, Vodovoz, who, almost 36 years later is still at KLVX, said the yearly PBS committee meetings had slowly begun to evolve into larger events over its first decade--an evolution that he was happy to see, he said, because the gathering started to "become more universal in its approach" to issues within the entire industry.
ENTER RALPH SCHUETZ
Track the second half of Ralph Schuetz's career in public broadcasting and inevitably you'll also get a good sense of the history of the PBS conference. Until he retired in 2004 (after 32 years at PBS in Arlington, Va.), the nuts-and-bolts logistics of the annual meetings were Schuetz's responsibility for more than half of the conference's existence.
(click thumbnail)Ralph Schuetz"In the early days, and continuing until the mid-nineties, the Las Vegas gatherings were little more than open meetings of the PBS Engineering Committee--replete with subcommittee meetings, mostly PBS staff reports and updates, and a little time for Q&A," Schuetz said. "There were few, if any, outside speakers. There were few, if any, vendors present. There were definitely no exhibits."
In 1978 PBS had become the first TV network in the United States to begin distributing programs via satellite, and some years later during Schuetz's tenure, the tech conference used KLVX's uplink to make the meetings accessible to local engineers back home via closed circuit. "That may have been my busiest time ever, because I had to manage the conference and direct the 'TV production,' too," Schuetz said.
There were no registration fees when the small meetings began to evolve into conferences. Schuetz simply asked engineers to let them know if they were coming "so we'd know how many chairs to set up and how much food to supply. We always had a lot more people show up than we had counted on. We would eat our deli lunches on KLVX's front lawn."
CONTINUED GROWTH
As the annual meetings continued to grow in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Schuetz knew it was time to find a larger venue. Then in 1995, it became a vital necessity, as KLVX needed its studio for its all-important Pledge Week fundraiser. Since the conference was still a bit small to interest any of the big convention hotels that catered mainly to NAB-related events, Schuetz said he somehow "stumbled upon" the Thomas and Mack Sports Center on the University of Nevada (UNLV) campus.
While the Center's 18,000-seat arena accommodated such events as the National Finals Rodeo and big-time college basketball, the relatively smaller PBS meeting happily moved into one of the 225-seat conference rooms.
"Now we had to start charging a registration fee for the first time to cover expenses--and we also had our first sponsors, along with some outside speakers, and technology de-monstrations," Schuetz said. "One year the Thomas and Mack had a rodeo going on in the arena, so we got the operator of the mechanical bull outside to let the engineers try their hand at bull-riding during the lunch hour."
In 1997, which marked the third year at the Thomas and Mack Center and was also the start of the now traditional "conference shirt" handouts, the event had once again outgrown its meeting place.
MOVE TO THE ALEXIS PARK
(click thumbnail)Andy Butler, senior director of engineering at PBS, moderates a panel at the 2003 PBS Technical Conference.At the suggestion of Ed Caleca, who was then senior vice president of technology at PBS, Schuetz contacted the Alexis Park Resort, but learned that the hotel's facilities were fully booked. Later, in what Schuetz termed one of those "serendipitous events," an Alexis Park's client abruptly cancelled, allowing PBS to move into the hotel's new convention facility. The 1998 meeting was held there and registrations numbered about 250.
After four years at the Alexis Park, the success and growth of the PBS Technology Conference required additional rooms dedicated for exhibits, as well as for breakout sessions for IT and traffic professionals who had been added to the mix of participants.
By 2003, the meeting's combined tally of registrants, presenters and exhibitors had grown to nearly 600, and once again, the conference was obviously outgrowing its latest home. This year would also mark another turning point in the conference's history. On the final day of the 2003 meeting, Schuetz informed Caleca (and then announced at the meeting) that he intended to retire after the 2004 conference. Schuetz said Caleca responded, "Not before we go to the MGM, Ralph," referring to the conference center adjoining the Las Vegas MGM Grand--then the largest hotel in North America.
Finally, the tech meet had become large enough to warrant the interest of one of Las Vegas' most impressive properties. Schuetz also noted that it didn't hurt that MGM's vice president of national sales was the same person who had been sales director at the Alexis Park six years earlier, and she remembered that she had liked the PBS crowd.
AN IMPORTANT TRADITION
As the PBS tech gathering continued to grow, one aspect has become a tradition--a big social event on the final night. Over the years, these have included receptions at Liberace's Las Vegas mansion, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, "Cirque de PBS," a trek to Old Las Vegas (downtown) for a bowling tournament and a barbecue aboard a paddle wheeler on nearby Lake Meade. (This year's Friday night bash is at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.)
Last year, for the first time in two decades, Schuetz didn't make it to Las Vegas. But this year he plans to return to see old friends on the meeting's final day to help celebrate the 30th anniversary and help kick-start the meeting into its fourth decade.
