When I found out that this year's NATPE convention was going to be in Las Vegas, I made sure I got registered as press so I could check out the various new and returning SFTV shows as well as whatever other celebrities turned up.

The convention was held mainly in the mammoth Las Vegas convention center as well as a few things held in the Las Vegas Hilton convention center.    The show is more than just about selling syndicated shows to the U.S. market.  There were lots of companies there to sell to international markets and areas devoted to British programming, Canada, France, Spanish, animation and New Technology.   Most of the major studios had big booths and some had big parties.  Several of the networks had affiliate meetings over the weekend with parties starting Sunday night (UPN/XFL party Sunday night at the Hard Rock Cafe for one).   The biggest news from the affiliate meetings was FOX making arrangements with their affiliates to allow them to move FOX Kids programming an hour earlier so that stations could run early news or other shows that draw a more adult demographic.   Very few of them were there looking for press publicity.  Some did put press kits in the press room, but at the booths, they were mainly interested in doing business.

Official NATPE activities began first thing Monday morning with a 5K run that had Kevin Sorbo (the busiest Celb at the convention) as the Official Starter.  After that there were some panels as well as the ALTV Sessions (the Association of Local TV, not anything to do with "Weird Al").   At lunchtime was the 41st International Broadcasting Awards Luncheon, where awards were given for the World's Best Commercials.  The awards were hosted by D.L. Hughley and Mo'Nique with Special Guest Presenters John O'Hurley (The Price is Right), Kevin Sorbo and Judge Mills Lane.  Mo'Nique introduced Kevin as the star of An-dro-me-da.  D.L. Hughley was getting disturbed by all the winning PSA type commercials that were pretty gloomy, but effective, especially one from Ireland about drunk driving.

After the day's panels, NATPE hosted an "Opening Celebration" on Monday night, with lots of food and drinks and some of Las Vegas's acts.  We got an Elvis impersonator from Legends, Rita Rudner did a short act, Magician  Steve Wyrick did a few tricks, and The Scinta's did a musical set.

After the celebration was the 5th annual Pitch Me Competition where prospective producers go through a pitch competition in front of a panel of judges.  It was hosted by Jeff Probst and featured as judges Stephen Chao, President, USA Cable; Meryl Marshall Daniels, Chairman & CEO, ATAS / President, Two Oceans Entertainment; Tom Nunan, President of Entertainment, UPN and Sean Perry, Syndication & Reality Television, Endeavor Talent Agency.  Some of the pitches were pretty decent, some were not and suffered the fate of the Gong that the judges could use.  Winner was a pitch for Status No, a feature show geared towards teenagers. One of the finalists was for Not the Mind Probe which would be a sketch show featuring a different celebrity each week that is strapped down on an examination table and subjected to a mind probe by two evil scientists.

On Tuesday morning, NATPE held a Coffee with Darren Star session, creator of Sex and the City, producer of Beverly Hills 90210, etc.    After that was the opening general session which featured an appearance by Blue Man Group to start things off.  After that, NATPE awarded the Chairman's award to Jerry Seinfeld.  Jerry made fun of the award to some extent, reminding people that the show had been off the air for a couple of years and that when he got awards, they were usually given to him in the evening, or at least at lunch.  To finish out the session was a "Hit Maker's" panel featuring moderator Jim Moret, Co-Anchor,World Today and Showbiz Today, CNN and panelists Michael Davies & Adrian Woolfe, the creative/production team behind Who Wants to be a Millionaire; Brenda Hampton, Creator & Executive Producer, 7th Heaven; Bill Maher, Creator, Executive Producer and Host, Politically Incorrect ; Ray Romano, Star & Executive Producer and Phil Rosenthal, Creator/Executive Producer, "Everybody Loves Raymond;" and Aaron Sorkin, Creator & Executive Producer, The West Wing

By the time that panel was over, the exhibit floor had been opened to all attendees and the hordes descended onto the floor.

NATPE Booth Tour - What was going on a various booths during the show, starting in the North Hall.

Paramount -  Lots of celebrities, but not much mention of Star Trek.  They were promoting Becker going into strip syndication and had the entire cast there on Tuesday.  Other Paramount celebrities appearing at the booth were Bob Goen & Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight, Judge Roy Brown, Judge Judy Sheindlin, Judge Mills Lane, Montel Williams, Ahmad Rashad.  Leonard Maltin  and Todd Newton were promoting Hot Ticket, a movie review show being sold by Paramount.

Litton Syndication - Jack Hanna with some animals The Thunder Girls promoting Thunderbox.  Litton's party was a Thunderbox show at the Hard Rock Casino.

Studios USA - Free breakfast and free lunch foods drew a big crowd.   John Edward, Jerry Springer, Brian Dennehy and Maury Povich all made appearances.

Lion's Gate - Adrian Paul supposedly was there.  I never saw him, though.   The Hooter's Girls were present a lot of the time promoting the new show "Who Wants to Date a Hooter's Girl".  I still associate Hooter's with an attempted murder trial I was a juror on where a Hooter's t-shirt that the defendant was wearing at the time was a piece of evidence.  But I digress...

Full Moon - William Shatner's Full  Moon Fright Show was thier main promotion.  They had a promo reel running that Shatner taped outside of a convention hall somewhere talking about the show interspersed with clips from the movies that would be part of it.  He did a couple of autograph sessions and also hung around afterwards to talk up prospective clients.

Promark - Distributors of The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne for U.S. Syndication.  They had several props from the show, including a model of the airship.  They had HDTV monitors set up running the series in widescreen.  They had the four main cast members each day, with Chris "Jules Verne" Demetral and his wife were hanging out at the booth pretty much all day Wednesday.  I got a chance to talk with Chris for a while about the show and prospects for a second season.  They haven't had a committment for a second season yet, but he was optimistic about it.  He really enjoyed getting a chance to see the show in HDTV.

King World - Home of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  Celebs included Whoopi Goldberg, Ray Romano, Pat Sajak, Vanna White and Martha Stewart (plus tickets for the Jeopardy tapings).

Mind's Eye - They had Leslie Nielson signing autographs promoting his new show, Liography, which has yet to find an outlet in the U.S.

Hallmark Entertainment - They had info on most of the various productions that were available for overseason markets plus a large Dinotopia mural on one side of the booth.  They didn't have any info inside the booth about the miniseries, though.

New Line Televsion - Had a mock up of a burning building to promote a reality series about firefighters.  Not much in the booth about The Lost World, but they did have ads in all the trades about it being renewed for a third season.

20th Television had a large booth, but were there mainly for doing business.  Nothing really flashy and no info for press.  They did have cast from Malcolm in the Middle there to promote the series for strip syndication.

Alliance Atlantis - They were promoting CSI for international sales and had the entire cast there.  They were also promoting Starhunter for U.S. syndication.

MGM next door was promoting various shows, including Stargate SG-1 and Outer Limits.  Nothing real special to do with the genre shows.  They did confirm that the new Outer Limits episodes being produced for SciFi would also air as part of the continuing syndication run.

HDTV Pavillion - They had an area with a bunch of HDTV related companies and a theatre to show off some of the product.  Unfortunately, the screen wasn't protected from the ceiling lights so it wasn't always a very clear picture.

WWF - Yes, the WWF had their own booth, promoting their new football league and their syndicated offerings.  I got a free t-shirt...

Texas Instruments - TI had a booth to show off their DSP Technology.  They had a roof over their booth so the HDTV demos there looked really good.  Sun Microsystems also had a booth showing off some of the web technology.

Tribune Entertainment - They had a large booth, set up mainly for doing business.  But they did have Andromeda Cast members, mainly to hang around and get your pictures taken with them.   Robert Hewitt Wolfe was also hanging around some.  Some of the producers from Mutant X were also there (I caught up with Marc Scott Zicree coming out of the booth Thursday  morning after he'd met with them).

Columbia Tristar Television - They actually had three booths, one for domestic distribution, one for international distribution, and another for their television group.  All the celebrites were mostly at the domestic distribution booth and unless you were a client or had made prior arrangements, you weren't allow in that booth.  Makes you wonder why they bought all those ads in the trade papers about meeting their celebrities.  So I missed out on my chance to see Gena Lee Nolin and and John Allen Nelson from Sheena or Pamela Anderson from V.I.P.

Fireworks Entertainment - Co-producers for a bunch of shows, giving them international distribution, Fireworks had the Andromeda cast members on Wednesday afternoon.  Since this appearance wasn't listed in all the trades, it was a much quieter spot.  A couple of Brit reporters were there to tape interviews with them for a Sky TV show, so those of you in the U.K. should keep an eye out for those.  They also had some very nice looking four page publicity brochures for Andromeda, which I managed to get a couple of them signed (one of them will be in the charity auction at the Gallifrey One convention).  When Sorbo saw it, he wanted to make sure he got some to take with him.  He also asked about getting some of the posters they had hanging from the rafters.   Sorbo did say that he was planning on doing conventions again this year, after having taken some time off from doing them.  That's where I got to get the picture of Kevin and his wife, Sam.  Now if I had only got them to pose where there wasn't a bright light in the background...

Universal Television was promoting The Grinch, I assume for international TV sales.  They had Max the Dog from the movie, plus special drink glasses and keychains (which I got there too late for since I was in the Celebrity Jeopardy taping) and Bob Blumer, The Surreal Gourmet making special foods.

Pearson Television  - They had cast from Baywatch Hawaii, plus Andrew Dice Clay and their Game show hosts at the booth.  They did have a nice video/computer setup where you could view the promo tapes for their various shows, where I did get a chance to see the promo for Colosseum.  Co-producer Sam Egan was there and I talked with him a bit about the show.  They didn't film a complete pilot, but filmed scenes to use for the promo tape.

Warner Bros had a large booth, but again it was set up mainly to do business and unless you had business with them, there wasn't much reason to go in.  The people at the Warner Bros. International booth were more friendly.  They didn't have any info for the press though, aside from some brochures about their offerings.

EM.TV - The German company that owns Henson had a booth, mainly to promote their kid offerings.  They did have some nice Farscape brochures, though.

Freemantle Corp. - Freemantle was promoting Black Scorpion, for which they have international distribution rights.  Michele Lintel was there (although not when I stopped by, unfortunately).  However, her stunt double, Julie Michaels, was there in the full Black Scorpion costume.

Salter Street - As part of a Canada section, Salter Street had a small booth, but no one to really talk about Lexx (I was hoping to get some news on the Fourth season).  They did have some Lexx postcards and Lexx posters to hand out, though.

For some video highlights from the show panels (including the Blue Man Group and Seinfeld's acceptance speech), you can go to http://natpe.digisle.tv/index.html  and see some streaming video.

A Few other Tidbits

While waiting for the doors to open for the opening celebration, I started up a conversation with a lady who turned out to work for Glen Larson, who was at the show to talk to various production companies on behalf of Glen for the possible Battlestar Galactica revival that Larson is trying to get going.  She had just been on the phone with him and he commented that SciFi was airing Automan that afternoon.

While stopping in at the Star Trek Experience on Wednesday night, I ran into Marc Scott Zicree at Quarks.  He was at NATPE to meet with some producers as well as USA Networks/SciFi about his C.O.R.E. series.  I ran into him again the next morning coming out of the Tribune booth where he'd been talking with the Mutant X producers.

The opening session on Wednesday was a women of TV panel, which started with a video salute to Women of TV, which got interrupted by an actress playing Lucille Ball, who had not been seen in the video yet.  In going over Lucy's accomplishments, she did point out that as president of Desilu, she gave the go ahead to make Star Trek.  Later, in the panel, Whoopi Goldberg in making a point about doing what people tell you not to do, said "If I listened to what people told me, I wouldn't have done Star Trek!". Kate Mulgrew as Janeway was seen in the video clips, however Nichelle Nichols wasn't...