It's Airshow Week At Aero-TV!
The third in a five part series, this week, starts off a series
of interwoven interviews in which we asked about a dozen airshow
professionals the same three questions... each of which will become
the topic of its own program over the next three days. In this
installment we asked a number of airshow luminaries the following
question... after the airshow business was rocked by the loss of a
favored team's sponsorship (the Red Barons), do airshows provide
the kind of value necessary to keep attracting high level
sponsorship???
In the next two parts, we'll address the airshow industry's
ability to keep up with the times and the overall safety situation
we find ourselves in as 2008 gets underway in earnest.
Produced at the ICAS Convention just before the end of the year,
we were pleased to be able to tackle such important subjects as the
industry made ready to start another year... but we apologize for
some of the lighting, as we were stuck with some bad conditions and
had to make the best of it.
ICAS tells us that Airshows draw large numbers of
demographically attractive spectators - a well-educated, affluent
group of men, women and children of all ages. More than 70 percent
of the audience at an air show has had some college education.
Three quarters report household income of $35,000 or more. The
average spectator is just under 39 years of age, but more than 53
percent of spectators are between 30 and 50.
Safety has always been a major airshow concern but a series of
unrelated accidents, this past year, to too many performers brought
the topic to the forefront of discussion at the most recent ICAS
get-together. ICAS notes that Airshows offer a consistently and
historically safe environment for millions of spectators each year.
Since current rules were implemented nearly 50 years ago, there has
not been a single spectator fatality at a North American show
– an enviable safety record for any business. But... they're
not satisfied to leave it that. A 'small working group' of ICAS
members recently met in Dallas to begin work on a new Safety
Management System for the air show industry that will serve as an
important tool in improving air show safety. Using existing safety
management systems as models, ICAS members discussed the changes
and accommodations needed to effectively adapt the work already
done in other segments of the aviation industry to the particular
needs and circumstances of the air show community.
Conceived as part of the larger ICAS initiative to change the
culture of air show safety, the product of this effort is intended
to document processes and procedures that our industry can use to
manage risk, report incidents and accidents, participate more
actively in accident investigations, identify trends, communicate
the results of these investigations to members, and reduce the
number of accidents in the air show community.
So... On To Part Three Of
Aero-TV's Conversation
With The Airshow Industry
About Aero-TV: It's DEFINITELY Show
Time!!!!
OK, folks, here we go... we are NOW initiating the first
feature programming series for Aero-TV... we're going to take it
slow, but we're also going to try and be steady about this. DO
UNDERSTAND that this is the most complex media program we've ever
undertaken and what you're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg...
but from here on out, we will be doing our best to educate,
inform, and entertain YOU about all aspects of the exciting worlds
of aviation and aerospace.
If you've been an observer of the media and associated media
industries over the last few years, it's not hard to mistake the
fact that a massive revolution is taking place. Old sources for
news and information are falling by the wayside, having to change
their modus operandi or risk obsolescence (or extinction).
Electronic media and print media are both under the assault of
progress, and the online world has been a cornerstone for
revolutionary change.
We've been ready to go for a while, but to be honest, there's so
much more to this program than we've alluded to, and so we've been
building and planning a massive new organization within ANN. That
said, we're hiring talented new people as
fast as we can find them (a far more difficult
task than we had imagined -- REALLY good people are hard to find),
and we're brainstorming at speeds that would make a deorbiting
Space Shuttle feel like a slug. Suffice it to say that we wanted to
do this right, rather than right-now, and that the development of
this program has been the most carefully pursued undertaking we've
ever undertaken.
E-I-C Note: The
complete feature shown above is embedded in this
story, with most of the slick and useful functionality
otherwise available on the main Aero-TV site (which will be
upgraded aggressively over the next few weeks). The ability to
embed a video on another web page is but one of the hundreds
of amazing little features that we've worked hard on, for many
months now, to implement in different phases of the initial
release of Aero-TV. It is, BY NO MEANS, the only way to enjoy
unaltered Aero-TV programming on other parts of the web... as we
have extensive plans for future functionality, but this
feature allows those with an interest in a specific Aero-TV News or
Feature program to embed it on a different web site, though we
must note that we reserve the right to forbid such use for those
sites or purposes that we do not feel fit in with the proper
mission of the Aero-News Network, Inc.
Webmasters or Administrators of well-trafficked aviation or
aerospace related sites, are welcome to contact the Publisher to
start conversations on how they may be able to leverage some of the
immense power of Aero-TV programming for their sites and
constituency by clicking the I Want Aero-TV For
MY Website! link.
Coming Soon!
Aero-TV Takes A GOOD Look At Honeywell's KFD840 and
KNS770!, Revisits the Aspen Avionics Program, Takes An EXTENSIVE
Look At The 2008 AEA Convention, Checking Out the Cirrus SR20,
Seeing What It Takes to "Compete" As An AMT, Looks At The FAA
FAASTeam Program, Updates On The Garmin 495, Flying The Piper
Matrix, Hears What's Hot At Blue Mountain Avionics, Gets Some
GREAT Rotax Lessons, Gets Updated On ALL Things Lopresti, Has A FUN
Chat With Corkey Fornof, Sees What Happens When AMTs Compete,
Checks Out The Ltest in Life-Raft Technologies, Checks Out
More "HIGH" Tech at I/ITSEC 2007, Hears From AOPA On Critical
Aviation Issues, Spills Some Juicy (and HIGHLY Detailed) Cirrus G3
Info, Scores A BUNCH of LSA Reports, and SO MUCH
MORE!!!!! Do NOT Miss Them!
ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (04.15.24)
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