BD Metrics wants to help trade show organizers catch up with the “YouTube effect” by offering TradeshowTV, a product that allows them to set up their own CNN-type news desk to broadcast show news from their organization’s Web site.

BD Metrics CEO Rick Geritz says, “Associations are sitting on all this great content but didn’t have a way to get it out professionally. TradeshowTV lets you take a piece of news, video, or picture, drag it into a Web site, and have it televised by a professional anchor at a virtual news desk.”

The idea, he says, is to have the show’s TV station look like a national newscast. Exhibitors can submit content to the show organizer, which can choose which items to run. Exhibitors also can run the show’s station on their sites and include their own news items--functioning like a local news station--which can help promote the show as well. (BD Metrics offers a revenue share back to the association for exhibitor TV, and exhibitors pay a fee to run news stories that are picked to be televised on the trade show station.) “So you have all this user-generated content coming from the exhibitor base, you have all the content control, it helps promote the show, and exhibitor TV creates a new revenue stream for trade show organizers.”

BD Metrics uses news anchors located around the world, so if you have international attendees and exhibitors, you can ask for anchors who can also read the news in languages other than English. “What we do is shoot an anchor anywhere around the world against a green screen and add in the virtual desk. You don’t have to spend $400,000 to get your own TV antenna, station, and cameras,” says Geritz.

For $5,000, show organizers get an Internet TV station for one year and three newscasts that will run before, during, and after the show. For an additional fee, organizers can get additional newscasts, he says.