By David Hatch
(Wednesday, May 9) LAS VEGAS -- It's officially the Cable Show taking place here this week, but much of the buzz is about other technologies that hold greater promise for revenue expansion, from on-demand video to wireless services and high-definition video-conferencing.
With telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon Communications angling to claim cable's programming market share and direct-broadcast satellite also a tenacious competitor, the cable industry is seeking new frontiers.
"I don't know of any American industry that has undergone more change in the last 20 years," Kyle McSlarrow, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, said during Tuesday's general session. "We have created three or four new businesses."
And more could be on the way. The latest buzz is about cable companies entering the wireless arena, potentially harnessing the next generation of technology to broadcast to mobile devices.
Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts noted that in Japan and South Korea, video is routinely broadcast to cellular telephones. "That could be the TV of tomorrow" in the United States, he said.
There is a consensus among industry executives that high-speed Internet service via cable modems will continue to be a revenue driver. "I think the prospects for cable have just been exponentially enhanced by the advent of broadband," Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons said.
Glenn Britt, president of Time Warner Cable, predicted Monday that it won't be long before more than half of the industry's revenue is generated by businesses other than video.
In the same discussion, Comcast Chief Operating Officer Stephen Burke noted that on-demand video, available whenever viewers want to watch it, is only in the "third or fourth" inning in terms of development. "It allows you to be tremendously creative with the way you deliver video programming," he said.
Underscoring the continuing potential of broadband, Roberts on Tuesday conducted a demonstration of wideband, the next generation of cable-modem service.
Using today's high-speed connections, it would take more than three hours to download all 32 versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary. Over wideband, the data transfer took less than four minutes. "With wideband, we're going to unleash a whole new era" of video, voice and data services, he said.
Industry executives chafed at suggestions that as large corporations, they lack the adaptability of small, agile competitors. "Companies like us, like the ones you see on this stage, have had to learn to grow into the new technologies," Parsons emphasized.
"I agree with what Dick said. This is a world in which the big get bigger," said Peter Chernin, president and COO of News Corp., which owns the popular social-networking site MySpace and which last week sought unsuccessfully to acquire The Wall Street Journal.
He predicted more communications industry consolidation.
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