WHAT'S NATPE WITHOUT ROGER KING, FOX AFFILS?

While working on another story yesterday, I was surprised to hear that Fox had decided not to hold its annual affiliate meeting in conjunction with the NATPE convention next January as it has for the past several years. Instead, the affiliates will gather in Los Angeles in March.

All true, said Fox spokesman Scott Grogin. The meeting is now slated for the 500-seat Zanuck Theatre on the Fox lot on March 19, the day after Fox hosts advertisers there for its annual “pre-upfront.”

Because the meeting is two months later, Fox will be able to talk more about the programming it has in development for the fall and screen some of the pilots. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for the affiliates to see what we are doing,” Grogin said.

I spoke to three Fox affiliates about the move. They said the decision had been made several months ago and none had a problem with it. “I think it’s great,” said Fox affiliate board member Brian Brady. “They may get a better turnout.”

Well, that’s all fine and dandy for Fox and its affiliates. But what about NATPE? The affiliate meeting had injected a big dose of broadcasters into the convention, which has seen their number steadily dwindle over the past decade.

The loss of the Fox affiliates is another sign that its days as a broadcasting convention may be over.

Of course, the biggest sign came earlier this week when Roger King and CBS Television Distribution let it be known that they were pulling out of the show—no booth, no suite, no nothing.

That was a stunning blow to NATPE. CBS is the biggest and baddest of all the distributors. It absence says plenty about NATPE’s utility as a marketplace of syndicated programming for broadcasting.

It’s hard to imagine NATPE without Roger. Back in the '90s, he and his brother, Michael, had their own company and they ruled the convention, making the most noise with the biggest parties and events. Did anybody in New Orleans in 1998 not see Elton John perform at the Super Dome with Whoopie and Roseanne in the wings?

I suspect it was all about money. No doubt, Les Moonves is squeezing all his divisions for every dollar as he tries desperately to lift his stock price (it’s the same place today as it was a year ago).

But, no doubt, Roger would have been back at the Mandalay Bay for NATPE 2008 if he could have justified the millions it takes to mount a CBS-like presence there.

But he can’t. Truth is, CBS Television Distribution can do its business without NATPE. It’s proved that just this month, clearing its new Dr. Phil spin-off, The Doctors, in half the country by simply meeting with a handful major TV station groups—CBS, Gannett, Belo and Post-Newsweek. By the time NATPE rolls around, the show will be fully cleared.

You can’t really blame CBS or any of the other syndicators for the demise of NATPE as a broadcasting venue. Syndicators are merely following the lead of broadcasters.

They stopped coming in large numbers to NATPE in the late 1990s as the industry began consolidating and much of the decision making shifted from GMs to station group executives.

The centralization has accelerated in recent years as Big Four affiliates in market after market have taken over CW and MNT affiliates through various duopoly arrangements.

And, frankly, tighter station margins have meant station owners are no longer interested is allowing their GMs to attend conventions as perks. They don’t even go to the NAB anymore.

So, it was inevitable that syndicators would begin downsizing their presence at the show, building smaller booths, opting for hotel suites or, now, disappearing altogether.

Ironically, the other NATPE news this week was the return of Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution to the NATPE floor. It was WBDTD’s former boss, Dick Robertson, who first noticed that the broadcasters weren’t coming to NATPE anymore and started syndicators’ questioning their big NATPE budgets.

NATPE President Rick Feldman’s response to all of this is philosophical. TV broadcasting is undergoing fundamental changes, he told me. “We are, like everybody else, trying to deal with the transformation.”

You cannot make NATPE something that it doesn’t want to be, said Feldman.

If broadcasters are no longer interested in a venue to talk about and shop for syndicated programming, he suggested, NATPE will evolve into something else—a programming marketplace for the international community or for the new digital media, perhaps.

“With every thing that goes away, there are new opportunities,” he said. “This year, we have a whole branded day with Advertising Age and we will have more advertisers than ever before.”

Judging by the NATPE conference over the past few years and some of the speakers it has lined up or next January, NATPE very much wants to be a digital venue.

But even here it is being challenged.

Sony Television Pictures, one of NATPE's strongest proponents over the years, now sees the Consumer Electronics Association's annual conference, set for Vegas just a few weeks prior to NATPE, as the place to be.

Sony is making a big deal of its plans to go to the show to sell its content to broadband programmers and purveyors of cell phone and PDA services. It even has a Web site dedicated to its CES presence.

NBC Universal is also attending the CES this year, touting its many programming brands as CES’s “first official broadcast partner.”

I’ll go to NATPE in January because there will be plenty of the people there that I want to see—or at least I think there will be.

Plus, I want to see how NATPE evolves in a world without Fox affiliates—and without Roger King.