If you are going to IBC, be aware that for the first time there is a specific Business strand at the IBC Conference, along with the Technology and Creativity sessions. The business debates kick off on Thursday 10th September, and I am chairing the first session, at 1215, called "Survive and Prosper" and featuring a range of top-level speakers all of whom run manufacturing companies. We'll be looking at the effects of the downturn and how companies can ride out the astorm but also prepare to take wing oncwe the upturn comes (as it surely must!). More info on this session and also on the IBC conference as a whole is here: 
http://www.ibc.org/page.cfm/action=Seminars/SeminarID=104/t=m/nocache=true 
 
 
Digital watermarking has come of age, with the issuing of he first really significant RFP from the music industry for a worldwide system to protect digital content. Here is the story:
http://www.shootonline.com/go/index.php?name=Release&op=view&id=rs-web2-2225734-1250655307-2  
 
 
Every so often you read something that really strikes you as having more than the usual quotient of good sense. John Luff's article about monitoring in the current edition of Broadcast Engineering did that for me, especially when I read this sentence: "The world of analog certainty has bcome the fuzzy world of digital confusion." Read the article here...
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/penton/be0809/#/56
 
 
Green shoots? Look at this story about TV station sales in the USA: 
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/local-broadcast/e3i85f38c299a3a459a6bdcda28d3285234