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NAB Show Is Cancelled After All

Show planners concede to the effects of the pandemic in the United States

Announcement from NAB on Twitter

The NAB Show is off. The National Association of Broadcasters will not hold its in-person event in Las Vegas next month after all.

Succumbing in the end to effects of the pandemic on the nation’s business, the NAB announced today that the 2021 NAB Show won’t happen.

This comes in the wake of several major exhibitor pullouts at the end of last week.

Until now, the convention organizers had pushed determinedly ahead, hoping to avoid having to go another calendar year without their signature convention. They’d put health precautions in place that included a planned requirement for proof of vaccination.

The announcement was made on Twitter and in an email to the show community from Chris Brown, NAB executive vice president and managing director of global connections and events.

“As we have always kept the best interest and safety of the industry as our priority, it has become apparent in the face of these challenges that we can no longer effectively host NAB Show or our co-located events, the Radio Show and Sales and Management Television Exchange, in person,” he wrote.

“Unfortunately, the pandemic and surge of the Delta variant has presented unexpected and insurmountable challenges for our global community.”

Organizers said there will not be an online or virtual NAB Show experience in place of the in-person show but that they are working on options to present some content from the planned conferences via its NAB Amplify platform.

The co-located Audio Engineering Society show also is cancelled, an NAB spokesperson confirmed. AES distributed a cancellation notice later in the day.

COVID-19 cases had surged again in recent weeks in parts of the country. Though some smaller industry meetings have taken place in person in the past month or two, the Delta variant has thrown some major event plans into disarray.

Just yesterday, registration opened for CES 2022 in Las Vegas in January. The 2022 NAB Show is scheduled for April.

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