Disney, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery And SAG-AFTRA Join Growing Industry Roster Set For Tech Talk At CES

In addition to its main purpose as a showcase for the latest gadgets, CES has long been a meeting ground for entertainment players.

This year’s edition, getting under way Monday in Las Vegas, will be no exception and is unfolding amid an elevated sense of urgency for traditional media companies to get right with the lords of technology. With theatrical box office and linear television in decline and layoffs continuing to thin the industry’s ranks, tech provides in some ways a welcome source of optimism despite its many complications and a culture still distinct from Hollywood’s.

On top of CES mainstays like Sony, Panasonic and other hardware firms holding court again with massive booths, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and SAG-AFTRA are among those with a presence. NBCUniversal, Amazon, Roku and Fox Corp. are among many making announcements and having execs on panels. Two of the confab’s handful of keynote speeches are by the CEOs of SiriusXM and Nvidia.

The latter company, which has had a meteoric rise to a $3.5 trillion market cap, is more than 30 years old but until recent years hasn’t been thought of as particularly connected with Hollywood. Its AI chips and technology are now central to animation, special effects and many other parts of the industry.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, who took one of history’s biggest swings at CES by unveiling the venture-funded (and ultimately short-lived) streaming startup Quibi there in 2020, is returning to help kick off OpenAP’s Audience Summit. The industry consortium’s half-day event will feature high-level execs (Amazon’s Krishan Bhatia, Fox Corp.’s Jeff Collins and TelevisaUnivision’s Donna Speciale among them) discussing the challenges and opportunities of streaming.

Michael Kassan, former head of MediaLink, will once again preside as a panel moderator and connector via his new company, 3C Ventures. The exec had a bitter and public breakup with UTA, which acquired MediaLink and then fell out with Kassan. The two have exchanged lawsuits. UTA and MediaLink, for their part, are also making the scene in Las Vegas, hosting a party with a musical performance by Meghan Trainor.

Advertising has become a key theme at CES as dollars continue to shift from traditional buckets into digital and streaming. “It’s like a kickoff to the upfronts,” NBCU head of advertising and sponsorships Mark Marshall told Deadline in an interview. “We really start our upfront conversations at CES, so it has been a priority for us.”

NBCU is looking to build interest across a number of major tentpoles heading toward the company’s 100th anniversary in fall 2026. “We’re really looking at ’25 and ’26 as one thing,” Marshall said. A new edition of BravoCon, golf’s Ryder Cup, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, the 60th Super Bowl, the NBA’s return; the FIFA World Cup on Telemundo – “All of those things were not on NBC in this upfront,” he noted, meaning the next one “will be a massive one for us.”

Disney, similarly, has positioned its prelude to the upfronts, the Global Tech + Data Showcase, as an annual live CES presentation, delivered by livestream to those not in Las Vegas.

“We have really invested, over the last decade, in technology that differentiates us from all of our traditional competitors,” Disney President of Global Advertising Rita Ferro explained in a recent in-house interview. “We can also compete with any of the new technology platforms, and what sets us apart across all of those is truly our scale. The ability to have the amount of content that we have across sports, which is a hugely popular marketplace right now in terms of advertisers and where they’re spending their dollars, is also a differentiator.”

WBD, meanwhile, has also been ramping up its brand efforts on Max, deploying sponsor integrations and targeted advertising. The third season of HBO’s White Lotus, which will premiere in mid-February, is the focus of a “Taste of Thailand” party at CES, complete with a synergistic cooking demonstration by a Food Network chef preparing the cuisine of this season’s setting.

Analysts looking at the intersection of entertainment and technology continue to see upside for the companies that manage to make the most of shifting consumer habit. Tim Nollen of Macquarie last month took note of a study by the Association of National Advertisers showing year-over-year improvements in the ad value chain. “Ad tech is becoming more efficient,” Nollen wrote, with figures in the report that “seem to point to an ad tech market that is growing up, with scaled players accruing benefits.”

Technology has undeniable allure, but it is also a complex force for creative stakeholders in film, TV and streaming. SAG-AFTRA, which seized on AI as a key issue in its 2023 strike against studios and streamers, is back at CES for its annual LIT Conference, short for “labor innovation and technology.” Duncan Crabtree, SAG-AFTRA’s National Executive Director & Chief Negotiator, will speak at the event, as will DGA National Executive Director Russell Hollander and senior officials from the WGA, IATSE and other guilds.