NEW ORLEANS – Using a variety of techniques, but primarily switching a whole lot of analog channels over to digital, Comcast, the largest cable company in North America, says it will reclaim up to half of its bandwidth in the next one-and-a-half to two years.
Comcast president and CEO Brian Roberts mentioned the effort at this afternoon’s general session here in New Orleans at the National Cable Telecommunications Association’s Cable Show and reaffirmed it for reporters in a press conference following the session.
“We’ve said we hope to take 20% of homes passed and create an all-digital experience for the vast majority of consumers,” said Roberts. With nearly 70% of its customers already digital and 5 to 10% who will probably only ever want analog, Roberts says the company is targeting the remaining 20% to try and get them to go all-digital.
Once that happens, sometime within 18 to 24 months, said Roberts, the company will be able to take 40 current analog channels and offer them on digital only, freeing up half of the bandwidth currently being consumed for other new services.
That all-digital environment will also more quickly enable the growth of Project Canoe, the consortium of American cable companies who have banded together to launch targeted advertising to their customer base. The companies, which includes Comcast and Time Warner Cable, have collectively put $150 million into the venture and is said to be on the verge of naming a CEO.
The new application allows different ads to be sent to different homes or neighbourhoods during the same 30-second commercial slot, depending on the demographic and the audience an advertiser wants targeted.
“That’s going to create value for those of us who have made that investment,” said Roberts. “We see that as the next big opportunity and we’re pretty focused about it.”
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All of the CEOs at today’s general session, Roberts, Intel’s Paul Otellini, Panasonic North America’s Yoshi Yamada, Viacom’s Philippe Dauman, and News Corp.’s Peter Chernin, all talked about their companies and pronounced them basically recession proof, thanks to their diversified port folio – and the fact that they have left behind the notion of protecting old business models in favour of looking ahead only.
Broadcasters the world over, including Canada, have been singing the blues about media fragmentation for years, wondering how to sustain their traditional businesses.
According to Dauman, that’s the wrong approach. “We have to embrace fragmentation, he said. “It’s a fact of life and is only going to increase exponentially.” Viacom staunchly focuses on its brands and its consumers to grow however they can “wherever they can” get in front of their customers.
News Corp’s focus is to maximize what it has of course and to grow, said Chernin, “But not just to protect. To the degree we work to only try to protect existing businesses, we’re toast.
“We need to build new business models faster than the old ones get broken,” or “we will be dinosaurs sentencing ourselves to extinction.”
“I wouldn’t trade places with some of these businesses who are solely dependent on advertising,:” added Roberts.
Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O`Brien is in New Orleans this week covering The Cable Show.
