TV from a "print guy's" P.O.V.

So... "News To Me" the Vegas edition. What did you think? Would Sinatra approve? It was a pretty big undertaking getting an easily distracted Eric Lanford all over town and through the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show. Luckily we had help.

Zach Honig from PCMag.com became a de facto part of the HLN/CNN team in Las Vegas. Whether he liked it or not! That's him in the photo above. No, not the gorgeous spokes model. Look over on the left... with his hand on his chin... in the background. That's Zach... and that is where Zach spent his time at CES... in the background. Making the rest of us look good, which is a much harder job than you might imagine. We thought that he might be a good "neutral party" to write today's blog post:

For a “print” guy, I’ve spent a lot of time around TV people in recent months. Between the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the Beijing Olympics, I feel like I just can’t get away from the hustle and bustle of cable news. I’ve been able to stay behind the camera most of the time, and luckily, CES was no exception.

As the product reviews coordinator for PCMag.com, I spend much of the year meeting with a range of tech players, including home entertainment reps, iPhone game designers, and of course, computer manufacturers. But many of those meetings take place in NYC hotel suites or one of our conference rooms, last an hour or more, and are largely focused on a PowerPoint presentation—nothing like what I experienced at the world’s largest consumer electronics show, where booth visits often last less than a minute.

I’ve always wanted to cover CES, walking well over a million square feet while soaking in the latest tech exhibits. Having the show in Vegas doesn’t hurt, but that’s really not what the week is all about. This year, I finally had my chance to see it all, while meeting the teams that helped create the gadgets we covered during the week and throughout the year.

For the first full week of January, I left my reporter hat in the Northeast and became a full-time TV producer, tasked with selecting and securing gadgets for PCMag.com Editor in Chief Lance Ulanoff's [HLN/CNN] segments (with a few appearances on *cough* the other networks). Most of my time was spent with CNN—I even took over one of the [HLN/CNN] workrooms for the week. During the show, Lance often wandered away from CNN’s booth in search of other hot gadgets to feature on his segments while I stayed put to research and receive product loans at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Lance and I worked closely with CNN.com producer Dan Wright and anchor Nicole Lapin, but I later had several opportunities to talk tech with HLN producer Grayson Thagard and “News To Me” host Eric Lanford. One afternoon while Lance was out and about, I headed to the Sands Convention Center with the HLN crew to check out some of the wackier gadgets at the show. From the second we stepped on the floor, Eric was in the zone, scanning the room for his first victim. Our first stop was at Mattel’s booth, where Eric played with the Mattel MindFlex, an electronic game that raises a small ball higher the more you concentrate.

I had my eye set on one other gadget at the Sands, so I tried to get Eric to head straight to the back of the hall after we left Mattel. It wasn’t nearly that easy: Eric stopped for a few minutes at the very next booth, and a third time after barely leaving the booth neighboring Mattel. Eric is a lot of fun, but man [he] loves to wander. Grayson (Eric’s producer) and I were joking that he would even stop to check out [something as mundane as] a water ionizer a few booths up. Grayson said he wouldn’t put it past him, but I was surprised when he actually stopped at the booth: “Whoa — what’s this do?”

From what I could tell, the Mattel MindFlex seemed to be a hit with Eric, as was the Liquid Image scuba mask video camera that we saw later that afternoon. Some of my “best of show” gadgets were the Palm Pre, the Powermat home power concept (think wireless power on every surface in your home), and the Samsung OLED displays that we featured on some of Lance’s CNN.com segments. Post CES, I’m back to playing with a never-ending parade of gadgets at PCMag.com, but I hope to be back with the HLN crew at CES 2010. Until then, enjoy the warm(er) weather in Atlanta while I freeze my butt off in NYC!

Ciao,
Zach Honig – (twitter.com/zachhonig)