The NAB conference covers a massive area within the media industry (many of which SiliconANGLE and theCube pick up as well), and all of the attending pundits are quick to give their unique takes on one segment or another.

Marty Shindler, the founding CEO of a major entertainment consultancy, is one of them. He moderated the Predictions from the Street: The Power Players Behind the Great Content Shift session, which looked into the financial aspects of the current industry transformation.

The arrival of new tools and tech innovation in recent years are the major drivers behind this shift, as cited by several of theCube interviewees, and Shindler’s panel touched on this topic from the executive point of view.

One highlight was rating comparisons using figures from ABC.  “Modern Family” is behind several shows in terms of nightly views – these include American Idol and The Big Bang Theory – but when counting DVR playbacks, it’s the most popular program with almost 18 million views.

“This is just one small instance,” said Shindler. “There are all sorts of other elements to be considered when it comes to understanding the Great Content Shift. For example, you’ve now got Netflix and Hulu producing original content, and Google/YouTube about to follow suit. You’ve got consumers able to shoot excellent-quality video, putting together and sharing their own content online. And you’ve got more and more devices capable of accessing this content whenever their users want it. All of these elements are changing the fundamentals of the content game,” Shindler said.

Another factor that is taken into consideration more and more is social media.  Several anchors co-hosted a different NAB session, which examines journalists’ use of data from social streams, the difficulty in identifying leads and the real-time advantage.