We’d wager that most people come to Las Vegas to have a good time, bringing some hope for a change in their fortune. It’s no secret that in recent years, the city has been moving towards being an even larger entertainment destination with the arrival of the NFL’s Raiders at Allegiant Stadium, soon to be joined by MLB’s Athletics and, of course, the curious landmark venue that doubles as a giant outdoor advertising screen, known as The Sphere, all would seem to signal that Vegas is more than a gambling destination in the desert..

However, with 30-plus billion dollars in revenue coming from gambling in 2024, make no mistake, betting is still what many come here to do.

We were thinking about this sitting in Harry Reid Airport on Wednesday, waiting for our flight home as we watched people getting in a few more spins at the slot machines amidst the gates of Terminal 3. Five short days ago, over 60,000 people were arriving for the 2025 edition of the NAB Show.

As a group, broadcasters arrived for the show with understandable concerns about the future of their core business. There are the ongoing challenges of dwindling audience shares, spurred by various challengers delivering audio and video using the internet instead of the airwaves. This seemingly infinite source of competition has also meant dwindling advertising revenues, more magnified in a year with no federal election cycle and far fewer political ad dollars. Adding to everyone’s worries was the uncertainty from the precipitous plunge on Wall Street following President Trump's announcement of his “Every Nation Gets A Tariff” trade policy on April 2nd.

So, all that shiny new technology to see in the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, much of it made in other countries, would likely have higher price tags in the future. That was hoping anyone had money to buy anything in the first place. With that as the reality they left back home, many broadcaster's faces looked more grim than Nicholas Cage’s character in the 1995 movie, “Leaving Las Vegas."

But as anyone who has ever visited Las Vegas knows, reality can be forgotten while you are here. And so the NAB Show opened on Sunday. 

If there was optimism to be found in all the new technology on display, it was that much of it was described in terms of how it could allow for significant productivity gains. From advancements like multiple station's master control operations to live in the cloud to AI-powered newsroom tools allowing journalists to create more content in less time. When you hear a sales pitch from a vendor on how their product could save hours of work, it doesn’t take a business degree to translate that promise into a smaller number of full-time employees needed in a radio or television station. The latest innovations were not just for the legacy over-the-air (OTA) broadcasting business but also for the newer business streams like streaming, OTT, and FAST channels and the ever-elusive promises of the shiny new thing of NextGen television on the ATSC 3.0 standard that you have probably heard so much about.

Don’t worry if you haven’t heard much about it. The audience who will have to buy all those new-fangled NextGenTV sets hasn’t either.

Many presentations were made on how those new NexGenTV sets might save the day. One example is the plan to make advertisements “addressable,” meaning a different commercial could be delivered to each set, as streaming video can presently do. If that didn’t sound like the answer, then maybe the promise of providing high-speed internet data would be the big winner, as plans to use part of the NexGen TV signal for “data broadcasting” were detailed.

It all made for an interesting tableau on Monday and Tuesday when broadcasters were walking the show floor, using the NAB Show app on their devices to figure out where everything was located and when the next presentation was starting. That was when they likely saw the breaking news alerts that the stock market was dropping even further.

But as anyone who has gambled in Las Vegas knows, and as Don Henley’s 1989 song told us, “Everything can change in a New York minute.” (We had to use that reference because the Eagles wrapped up their shows at The Sphere on Saturday night. From those who were in attendance, we heard that they sounded great, even if the remaining founders of the band are now in their seventies.)

By Wednesday, when the NAB Show officially ended its short run, Wall Street was on a run of its own, now swinging in the upward direction. The reversal of fortunes was due to the President’s surprise announcement of a 90-day pause in implementing those just announced sweeping tariffs. Even as the ever-skeptical national news media tried to question the explanation that this was part of the plan all along, executives from all walks of business, including those from broadcasting, breathed a small sigh of relief as they boarded their flights to head home.

Now, they could return to wondering what the equally mercurial chairman of the Federal Communications Commission might come up with next to rattle the business. As one long-time industry watcher said: “Coming to Vegas reminds us all that life is just like a big game of craps. You’re just waiting to see what happens on the next roll of the dice."

For us, reality returned as the sound of the ever-spinning slot machines in the airport faded when we walked down the jetway and boarded the plane to take us home.