DURING THE OPENING GENERAL session at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo Wednesday, Cox Communications CTO and show chair Chris Bowick gleefully took a few shots at his telco competition down here.
Pointing to the billions of dollars being spent by the likes of Verizon and AT&T to bring fibre to the node, or the home, to deliver IPTV, Bowick called their efforts a "me-too" service adding that while the telcos have yet to make much of a dent in the video business, "we’re certainly taking a huge piece of theirs."
"They’re just now learning what we already knew all along, that we have the best networks… and they are just trying to catch up," he hyped.
Liberty Global president and CTO Michael Fries expressed similar sentiments. Liberty, controlled by former TCI chief John Malone, owns and operates cable systems in 20 countries, passing 30 million homes. In many markets, the local telcos have launched video as well, "and no one has really succeeded at it yet," he said, and as long as "the telcos operate rationally (in terms of pricing), they will have little or no impact on our business."
At the same time, Liberty is rolling out VOIP in its markets, adding it to its data and video packages. Fries used a little Canadian content to make his point calling voice "the Steve Nash of the product bundle – it not only sells itself, it sells all of our other products as well." For those who aren’t basketball fans, Victoria B.C.’s Nash is the two-time NBA MVP best known for his passing and making his teammates better players.
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During a discussion of new gadgets and the multiplatform opportunities that exist for cable operators and broadcasters, Oxygen Media CEO Geraldine Laybourne said the advertising industry holds back companies like hers, which owns the women’s cable channel Oxygen. She said Oxygen wants to experiment more, but they need their advertisers on board. "This is a very tricky time for us," Laybourne explained. "Ad agencies are always the last ones that have to be dragged on board and it’s going to be a long time before we get them on board." She noted it took almost 25 years for the U.S. ad agencies to simply recognize the value in buying time on cable channels, so she’s not hopeful they’ll be all that willing to try an ad spend on broadband.
"I’ve always thought ad executives were the most conservative group of executives out there," added author and editor (CableFAX, CableWorld) Paul Maxwell.
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As reported on Monday by Cartt.ca, Hamilton, Ontario’s Mountain Cablevision won a Top Tier System Award from the SCTE’s official magazine, Communications Technology. Comcast Seattle won System of the Year while Cox Gulf Coast and Time Warner Columbia S.C. were the other two Top Tier Systems. Heady company for the folks from Hamilton.
A large contingent of Mountain people are in Denver, including founder and owner Owen Boris, CEO Les Boris and president John Piercy. Head of engineering Bruce Marshall (pictured between Tom Wilson of award sponsor Scientific Atlanta on the left and CT editor Jonathan Tombes) credited the people at Mountain – who have been hard at work installing as many new VOIP customers as possible, for example. "This award is due to the capabilities and intelligence of the staff I work with," said Marshall.
Tombes credited Mountain for being the first system in North America to go to digital simulcast in May of 2004, "ahead of Charter Long Beach which is often cited as the first one to do that," he said.
Cartt.ca would also like to extend its congratulations to the innovative, hard-working folks at Mountain. It’s not often Canadian systems (especially one the size of Mountain) are recognized among the elite MSOs in North America.
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During the CTO session, Vince Roberts, VP worldwide technology for the Walt Disney Corp., told the audience that during the month and a half trial of streaming some of the company’s most popular content for free on abc.com, over 11 million streams of shows like Desperate Housewives and Lost had been downloaded. The company’s research showed viewers had an 87% retention rate on the ads shown "twice the usual retention on TV," said Roberts. Viewers were not able to skip the ads but could click on them to interact with the advertiser. The test ends at the end of June, at which time Disney will decide how it wants to proceed.
Roberts also said he was speaking with Comcast folks to do an experiment so that every time a Comcast high speed customer were to click on myabc.com to watch one of these shows, the customer would be given the feed from their local ABC affiliate – complete with the local ads.
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Analog cable isn’t going anywhere soon, said outgoing Comcast CTO David Fellows. The largest MSO in North America says in five years it plans to still offer anywhere from 20 to 40 analog channels. MSOs here see it as a competitive advantage. "There’s a saying that ‘old TVs never die, they just move to the bedroom,’" said Fellows. In the U.S. there are 2.5 to 3.5 TVs in the home but just 1.5 set top boxes, meaning there could be up to two televisions in the home without a set top box. To provide an STB to all customers like that would mean Comcast would have to buy 40 million set tops and "if I can avoid buying 40 million set tops by keeping 40 analog channels, I’ll do that," he said.
