A tale of two trade shows: Cable '97 and NAB '97.

After landing in New Orleans for Cable '97, after checking into the hotel, the first order of business was a visit to the mighty Mississippi. Swollen by upstream flooding, its current flowing at twice the normal speed, the river rushed past, barely four feet from the top of the wall protecting the French Quarter and the nearby Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

The river seemed an apt metaphor for the condition of the cable industry in 1997 as some 28,000 souls gathered in the war-scarred town of Delta blues for the 46th annual conference and show of the National Cable Television Association. Optimism rose during the show like a river climbing its banks.

Cable system operators and content providers felt buoyed by the coming surge of interactive services on North American cable networks. If the public welcomes the cable modems and digital set-top boxes finally being deployed this year, the gush of currency could burst the floodgates. Cable appears poised to saturate local markets just as Old Man River appeared poised to engulf the swamp-land city that care forgot.

The rising tide of direct broadcast satellite and "wireless cable" services do bear watching, cable execs concede. Phone lines can provide enough of an upstream channel for most kinds of video-on-demand and transaction services. Yet a nagging doubt persists. How far can early asymmetric networks carry us into our interactive future?

Cable modems were everywhere, in exhibits on the show floor, in a cyber cafe and in the press room. Goodbye World Wide Wait. Using the business model for set-top boxes, cable system operators are buying millions of modems for rental to customers at a few dollars a month.

Also abounding were astounding demonstrations of digital set-tops able to handle MPEG-2 delivery of the services packaged as "interactive television." There were booths devoted to digital navigation guides, video-on-demand, interactive advertising, home shopping, personalized news and sports, distance learning and other goodies promised back in 1993.

Cable is wiring classrooms for the 21st century, declared industry professionals during the general sessions. In various panels, they asserted that cable's hybrid fiber-coax systems are the best for high-speed Internet access, distance learning and interactive TV. Once switching is installed, cable's HFC plants will offer video telephony, or viewphones.

Regarding broadcasters, cable pioneer Ted Turner summed up the cable attitude in the general session. On stage live with Larry King, the Time Warner executive and founder of CNN quipped that he'd wanted to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to toss out the "must carry" rule in time for Cable '97. It's a matter of fair play, he insisted. Cable serves more than 65 percent of all TV households. If cable must carry local broadcasting stations, doesn't cable deserve a slice of the advertising pie?

Cable '97 ended on an upbeat, confident note. Will the rising tide of broadband cable services really wash away all competition?

A week later, the skyline of Manhattan and an Egyptian pyramid passed under the window of an aging aircraft moments before it landed in Las Vegas. Some 100,000 media types descended on the desert gambling oasis (population 400,000) for a mind-numbing week at the 51st annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters.

An unspoken sense of deliverance pervaded NAB '97. Days before the show began, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold "must carry." Hear that collective sigh of relief? The bet paid off. Broadcasting will endure.

NAB is the third largest media trade show in the United States, after Comdex and the Consumer Electronics Show. The exhibition was so huge that it was divided among three locations.

There was the Hilton Conference Center, where a bronze Elvis presided over the casino. Attendees headed upstairs to the hospitality suites for technology demonstrations of anything from nonlinear editing to automated weather forecasting.

In the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center, television, radio, satellite and "wireless cable" microwave broadcasters could choose among concurrent conferences presented by more than a dozen media trade associations on every conceivable phase of TV engineering, production, post-production, distribution, promotion, advertising and fiscal management.

From wall to wall, the NAB exhibit halls offered "end-to-end solutions for your broadcast application." Crowds gathered at booths with blue screen "virtual studios," where live spokesmodels interacted with digital 3-D characters animated by actors in motion-capture suits. Reality met illusion in a faux town where delusion rules.

Demonstrations of digital high-definition television (HDTV) dominated NAB '97. HDTV is ready for the market. But is the market ready for HDTV? How soon and how much should we invest in the transition to digital? When will HDTV advertising revenues begin to repay the high cost of conversion?

Conversation turned from HDTV to the Internet on TV on the shuttle bus from the Las Vegas Convention Center to the Sands Convention Center, where NAB '97 Multimedia World broke records for size and attendance. Folks sounded rattled by the news of Microsoft's acquisition of Web TV.

On display in the Sands was everything you ever wanted to know about constructing Web sites but felt too dumb to ask. Attendees could learn about authoring CD-ROM programs and DVD disks and discover digital datacasting. No cable modems were in sight, but many voiced an awareness of the need for interactive content to fill all the new cable channels as compression begins. Boundaries blur between modern media modalities. The watchword is "convergence."

On the last morning of the last day of NAB '97, there was a panel at the Sands, "Social Focus of New Media." Thirty people attended. They deserve applause.

Hot desert winds died down long enough for a safe lift off. One tries to see ahead. Cable leads terrestrial broadcast in providing interactive TV services. Will broadcasters overcome their resistance to the idea of transmitting to digital TV sets and set-tops with some kind of return path? Where will we land a year from now, or five years from now?

Below, gray clouds stretch beyond the horizon.