LAS VEGAS: This week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is shaping up to be the biggest to date. The show, which has supplanted Comdex as the king of tech trade shows, has 2,500 companies exhibiting for an expected 130,000 attendees.
And with consumer electronics hotter than ever, the media come by the thousands as well. Last year, more than 4,500 journalists attended CES.
To find out just how those journalists want their information, Access Communications queried more than 100 reporters about their needs before and during the show.
Michael Young, SVP with Access, also noted the importance of the press conference. Fifty-eight percent of reporters prefer to get their news at a press conference, while 39% prefer a one-on-one briefing at the show. Only 25.7% wanted a phone briefing at the show.
The study also found that more than 80% of journalists will arrive before the show opens. And 92.5% want to hear about company and product news before the show. Also, 67% prefer not to leave the show floor for briefings.
"Journalists have limited bandwidth at the show," said Young. "They can only do so much, so they want to know what the news is before getting there."
In terms of coverage, 67% will write a post-show wrap-up, while 65% plan to cover individual products and companies, and write trend articles.
Only 35.6% will blog about their CES experiences. Young said he thinks that low number reflects the fact that many journalists attending are from consumer titles, not just tech media.
When Access releases similar surveys of journalists attending other trade shows, including the video game conference E3, the security-focused RSA Conference, and the telecommunications and wireless-focused CTIA, the number of journalists blogging will be much higher.
