CES Revs Up Buzz for Video in Cars T

his past week marked my 10th consecutive trip to Las Vegas for CES, the annual showcase for technology of all kinds. While the entertainment industry hadn’t been too well represented at the event initially, that has changed in big ways in recent years, from a dedicated section at CES (known as Cspace) to Variety’s own annual summit.

There’s still plenty to see and experience in and around the Las Vegas Convention Center that has nothing to do with content. But even technology that seems far afield from Hollywood can’t escape its influence entirely.

Take autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars are not new to CES this year. But 2019 was the first time the prospect of offering video programming for the commuting experience felt like a realistic inevitability rather than a flight of fancy reserved for “The Jetsons.”

Autonomous entertainment was among the buzzed-about trends emerging from Las Vegas this year because studios found some strange bedfellows to develop really innovative proofs of concept. Disney teamed with Audi to create an “Avengers” experience in VR that responds to the movements of the car. Warner Bros. and Intel collaborated on a “Gotham City” narrative that can be watched on the windows from inside a customized BMW.

When I interviewed Viacom CEO Bob Bakish onstage at Variety’s CES Summit, he could barely contain his optimism for what he saw as the video marketplace of the future. “A helluva lot more people are going to be entertained in cars,” he told me. “There’s going to be more demand, and everyone and their brother is going to want a piece of that pie, and most of them don’t make content.”

To be sure, the Disney and Warner Bros. demonstrations are nowhere near ready for the marketplace; it will probably be a good decade or so before we see this kind of technology hit the streets. But when you consider how much time each week consumers spend in their cars, it’s no wonder the autonomous trend has Hollywood’s attention even at this early stage.