(Las Vegas, November 18, 2002) - The day after COMDEX closes later this week, executives of the show's producer, Key3Media Group, Inc, will return to their Wilshire Boulevard offices, in Los Angeles. . .and start trying to figure out if there's any way for them to stay in business.

One immediate problem is that Key3Media simply lacks the cash to meet its Q4 financial obligations, having made them for Q3 by only a narrow squeak. Specifically, it seems that the company will be unable to pay the interest payment on its senior subordinated notes due on Dec. 16. One avenue the company's directors are exploring is, inevitably, Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

What occasioned Key3Media's annus horribilis here in 2002? Why, for the first nine months of this year taken together, did it end up with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) revenues of negative $299.6 million...and a net loss of $686.2 million? Opinions differ, but for starters the massive overhead of running the national COMDEX show is no longer surpassed by the revenue coming in from it. There just aren't enough attendees, or vendors wanting exhibit space, for the numbers to add up any more.

The result? No fewer than six of Key3's twelve board members have resigned since July, in which month the company suffered the indignity of being de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange. Key3Media Group stock now trades in the over-the-counter market for less than 3 cents per share and the company has called in specialists to help it bolster its beleaguered balance sheet.

It will be a challenge, because Key3 is under-performing compared to similar companies in the tech show space: reports show that the average attendance of such shows is down 14%, but COMDEX attendance this year is down 41%. Similarly the average amount of exhibit floor space sold at tech trade shows fell 5.6% last year, but at COMDEX floor space is down 32%.

So perhaps even the financial wiles of boutique investment bank Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin might not be enough to save Key3. Indeed one COMDEX speaker is a technology commentator and specialist on the future, Mitchell Levy. President and CEO of ECNow.com, a strategic consulting company, Levy is offering journalists today the following topic as a talking point for interviews with him: "Will COMDEX survive? - An insider view".