Launched in 1967, the Shopper Electronics Present bounced round cities and spots on the calendar earlier than lastly settling down in 1998 as an occasion held each January in Las Vegas. For greater than half of these years, the Selection Leisure Summit has been a fixture of that New 12 months’s custom, bringing collectively leaders from varied media verticals for onstage discussions about how bleeding-edge applied sciences are reworking leisure and shaping the tradition.
This 12 months, Selection’s CES providing is available in two components, each held at C-House Studio on the Aria: the Selection Leisure Summit on Jan. 7 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and the Selection Enterprise of Creators Summit, offered by Samsung Advertisements, on Jan. 8 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Individuals will embody everybody from Disney president of worldwide promoting Rita Ferro and Hasbro president of licensing and leisure Kim Boyd to actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Simon Helberg.
This 12 months, there can be added urgency to the conversations introduced on by the lightning-fast emergence of AI, which is seen by many as an existential menace.
However Jon Liebman, chairman and CEO of Brillstein Leisure Companions, factors out that AI is simply the most recent in an extended line of tech disruptors that have been purported to spell doom for the biz, from the arrival of sound motion pictures within the Twenties to house video within the Nineteen Eighties and the web within the Nineteen Nineties.
“I might say Hollywood has cried wolf so much about know-how destroying its enterprise, and really, the alternative has most likely occurred,” says Liebman, who will seem on “The Way forward for Content material” panel, moderated by Selection co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton on Jan. 7. “The know-how, when harnessed appropriately, has turn out to be a software for what we now have, which is world distribution of content material. And so whereas I don’t assume anybody actually is aware of what it would do to our enterprise, I believe that the worry that now we have must be tempered by the truth of what know-how has really traditionally executed for the leisure enterprise, which is gas its progress in period after period.”
Liebman will get no argument from Jonathan Yunger, co-founder and CEO of AI-powered content material manufacturing platform and studio Arcana, who will be a part of actor-producer Breckin Meyer (who stars in Arcana’s AI quick “Echo Hunter”) and Luminate chief analyst and president Andrew Wallenstein for a dialog on AI storytelling on Jan. 7.
“The [AI] toolset can actually make a distinction and assist with with the ability to preserve or elevate manufacturing worth, however decrease prices,” says Yunger, including, “AI doesn’t work with out the artistic, with out the storyteller.”
Different panels on the Selection Leisure Summit on Jan. 7 embody “The New Enterprise of Leisure,” moderated by Danny Ledger, telecom, media & leisure chief for consulting companies, Deloitte; “Expertise This! What’s Subsequent in Occasions Throughout Platforms” and “Fandom within the Zeitgeist,” moderated by Selection enterprise editor Todd Spangler; “AI in Overdrive” and “The Massive Image Outlook — What Traits Will Form 2026?” moderated by Littleton; and “Harnessing Fandom Via Dwell Sports activities Content material That includes Amazon Advertisements & WPP Media.” There may also be a “Brandmakers Elite Roundtable” and a headliner dialog with Anthony Wooden, founder, chairman and CEO of Roku.
The Selection Enterprise of Creators Summit on Jan. 8 will characteristic such panels as “The State of the Creator Financial system in Media and Leisure,” moderated Wallenstein; “New Hollywood Energy Gamers: The Rise of Creators on TV” and “The Energy of the Creator Model,” moderated by Littleton; “The Dwell Purchasing Period Has Arrived” and “Audiences Unlocked — The Way forward for Creator Advertising,” moderated by Spangler, in addition to hearth chats with “media cartographer” Evan Shapiro and Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie.
