GRAVENHURST, Ont. – The final day of the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance annual general meeting last Thursday was both informative and thirst-quenching.
While the first day was all about a trade show and golf, as reported by www.cartt.ca, day two was education-focused.
After hearing in the morning from lawyer Purdy Crawford on the value of leadership and American Cable Association president Matthew Polka on what’s up Stateside, Canadian Digital Television president and high definition missionary Michael McEwen outlined recent progress in HD deployment.
Most of his figures were out of the U.S.
Ninety percent of Americans now have access to five or more HDTV signals and it looks likely that the American Congress will set a December 31st, 2008 deadline for the shutoff of the broadcasters’ analog spectrum there.
According to figures McEwen said he had just received from the Consumer Electronics Association, American retailers expect to sell 15 million HD sets this year, placing the number of such TVs in the market at 31 million. The CEA says that retailers will sell 22 million more HD sets in 2006 and a further 31 million in 2007, bringing the total number of high definition televisions in the U.S. market – in just over 24 months from now – to 85 million.
There is 60 hours per week of prime time HD programming from American broadcasters and 100 hours a day from U.S. cable channels, he said. As for the Canadian broadcast HD content? “It ain’t great, folks,” he said. “(Canadian) Viewers still find the HD offerings modest.”
However, he did pay tribute to leaders like Rogers Sportsnet, The Movie Network, TSN, and Discovery for their carriage of HD programming.
At lunch, the CCSA presented its supplier of the year award to Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting (which was accepted by affiliate marketing vice-president Chris Fuoco, right), its member of the year award to Access Communications (Regina), which was accepted by president Jim Deane, and an award to outgoing board chairman Jim Forsyth of CRTV (Campbell River, B.C.).
The CCSA’s new board chairman is Amtelecom Inc. (Aylmer, Ont.) president and CEO Michael Andrews.
After lunch – where a very funny Brent Butt of Corner Gas gave a memorable performance – Mike Lee, vice-president, strategy of Rogers Communications took the stage. “I always like speaking to the CCSA because you can feel the passion in the room,” said Lee (left).
He covered much of Rogers’ tactics when it comes to on demand programming, switched video, HDTV, voice service, and the state of the telcos’ DSL TV.
TMN On Demand, he mentioned, was a particular winner. It’s seeing a usage rate of 65% “without a lot of effort and insufficient marketing,” said Lee. Plus, it reduced churn by 50 to 70% when the company raised the TMN subscription price by $2 a month in July.
As for voice, there are a number of bugaboos to watch for, he told delegates, many of whom have launched, or will soon launch, telephony. Rogers has dealt with software patches and other technical issues since its voice – and VOIP – launch in July of this year, but those last few metres, those pesky cable drops, must be addressed, he added.
As for DSL TV, it is coming, no matter what cable companies think of its potential. It’s in market in the east with Aliant, in Manitoba through MTS and in Saskatchewan from Sasktel. But, “HD is the Achilles heel for non fibre to the premises implementations,” he said. The capacity just isn’t there to do it properly.
Self described geek and futurist Tod Mafin spoke after Lee and entertained the crowd outlining Bell mistakes and saying that cable holds the keys to TV’s future. “Whoever has the closest relationship to the customer always wins.”
“I don’t believe that TV viewers are loyal to station brands,” he said, saying he thought people are instead, loyal to shows, which he’d like to see more of. “Where’s the first full season of 24 on demand? Where’s the full library of Seinfeld on demand?” he asked.
“I’d pay $75 a month to access every TV show aired during the last 10 years.”
After Mafin came Dan McKeen, co-CEO of EastLink, to speak – succinctly – on his company’s very successful telephony rollout.
The company launched voice in 1999 – well before VOIP – with its very own Nortel DMS 500 switch. In the beginning, EastLink was hooking up about eight telephone customers per week “because that’s as fast as the telcos could go (disconnecting people),” he said.
McKeen (right) also thanked Aliant for a decision it made early on when dealing with long distance customers who switched to EastLink for their local phone service. Aliant chose “to be really mad” at those customers and didn’t allow them to take advantage of any long distance deals. So, EastLink, which hadn’t planned to have an LD option, launched its own long distance package which will bring in $12 million in revenue this year, he said. “So I’d like to publicly thank Aliant for that.”
But what really brought phone company legitimacy to EastLink? The phone book. “People said, well, if you guys can do that, you’re really in the phone business. It meant more legitimacy,” he said. 
The final session of the day brought the refreshments. Called “Champagne Marketing on a Beer Budget” Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting put together a panel of (l to r) Access Communications’ marketing head Rick Fraser, Source Cable’s (Hamilton) marketing chief Myrna Bontje, the Craft Brewers Association director of marketing Mary MacIsaac, Muskoka Lakes Brewery founder Gary McMullen, and Steam Whistle Brewery CEO Cam Heaps.
The theory was that craft brewers and small cable companies have a lot in common in that they must battle huge multinational corporations for market share and must be creative and hard-working to maintain their niche. The beer-makers also came together with the Craft Brewers Association to pool their resources (sound familiar?)
Moderator Fuoco pointed out that Molson’s and Labatts spend about $100 million a year – or $275,000 a day – on marketing. That’s not a game the craft brewers can play.
The cable panelists and brewing panelists had much in common – where the focus was often on the smaller picture – getting local and focusing on the service (or beer) and the people involved.
For example, Fraser pointed out that Access is in 31 Saskatchewan communities and each one has its own cable channel, even the tiniest of systems. He said the company sponsored – in some way – over 1,600 community events annually.
And at the end of the session, out came the Alliance Atlantis-branded coolers, filled with the suds from those craft brewers, for everyone to enjoy while they talked marketing in breakout sessions.
A great way to wind down three days of networking, fun, and learning.
