On Wall Street, they refer to the collective of high-performing Silicon Valley assets as “FANG.”
Of course, in Las Vegas this week at the annual NAB Show, the forces of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google consume a fairly large bite, as well, with the NAB’s traditionally core broadcast and programming constituency still grappling with their footprint.
“Why are consolidation, FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) and the future top of mind for the decision makers in the media, entertainment and technology space?” asks an abstract for Monday’s North Hall Main Stage presentation “Leading Through Disruption.” The hourlong 3:30 p.m. program will feature Amy Emmerich, chief content officer for Refinery29; Marian Pittman, executive VP of digital strategy and research for Cox Media Group; Muriel De Lathouwer, managing director and CEO of EVS; and Ginny Morris, chair and CEO of Hubbard Radio.
Indeed, at increasingly large scale, NAB programming seems focused on how the confab’s traditional constituency can somehow compete with the Silicon Valley server farm operators … and at the same time, teaching them how to peacefully assimilate and operate in a video world now controlled by these monoliths.
For example, Neal Mohan, chief product officer for YouTube, will headline the 2018 NAB Show Opening on Monday at 9 a.m. in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
“YouTube’s story is a perfect representation of the ‘M.E.T. Effect’: the convergence of media, entertainment and technology,” said NAB Executive VP of Conventions and Business Operations Chris Brown.
Meanwhile, additional Google presence at the show will be made felt by Rebekah Dopp, principal, news & local media global partnerships, who will panel the Tuesday session “TV Across Genres: The Future of OTT & TVE Monetization”; and Adrian Graham, media and entertainment cloud solutions architect, who will speak during Tuesday’s “Machine Intelligence: From Dailies to Master - Machine Intelligence Comes to Video Workflows” panel moderated by Kylee Pena, production coordinator for Netflix.
Even on a sponsorship level, FANG’s presence seems ubiquitous. For example, Google is a “Gold Sponsor” of the “Streaming Summit Beer Garden” event, while the ever-more-powerful cloud-services provider Amazon Web Services is producing Wednesday’s Mars-themed “Race on the Red Planet: Chasing our Creative Future with Curiosity and Opportunity” and the ongoing “The A.I. Experiential Zone” presentation.