It was something of a coming-out party for cable conference-goers at the CTAM Broadband Opportunity Conference last Wednesday and Thursday in Tyson's Corner, Va.
In spite of the overall trepidation about traveling since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 461 people turned out for ?The FYI on HSI and iTV.?
The number of attendees was a pleasant surprise for the organizers. According to Phyllis Dickerson-Johnson, CTAM's director of communications and media relations, the hoped-for figure was about 400.
Some suspected that the unexpectedly large number of attendees might have something to do with their opting out of the Western Show at the end of the month.
According to one industry marketing executive, several people said that they weren't going to attend both shows. Their reasons are numerous: corporate curtailing of travel, a diminishing number of potential business partners attending the show, a lingering apprehension about getting on a plane.
One network-affiliate sales representative who isn't going to the Western Show said that this year circumstances have caused the Western Show to be seen as a less-than-national event. In flush times, ?they say that everybody should go, since it's the second-biggest [cable trade] show. This year they're calling it regional.?
Some were simply after opportunities in broadband. New York-based Gotham Broadband's Patrick McDarrah, VP-business development, said that the CTAM conference is just right for his small broadband-enabling company: It's more economical (new-media table displays were just $2,750), more intimate and more marketing-focused, since the Western Show has a technology bent. Also, McDarrah added, ?As a service company, our presence instills confidence [in potential clients] that we won't go out of business next week.?
As for the talk from the podiums and panel seats, ?content,? a word very recently antonymous with profits, was quite the rage. Its most outspoken fan was Cablevision Systems chairman Charles Dolan, who said that VOD ?puts away the idea of channel capacity and limits of any kind? and thus makes any content delivery possible. Cablevision recently started rolling out its digital service in its home market on Long Island, N.Y.
In addition to the usual movies, Cablevision's ?Mag Rack,? 16 interactive video magazines, is another Dolan venture into the content arena. It will offer 50 video mags to subscribers by year's end ? including ?bird-watching? and ?maximum science.?
Asked about making money off of virtual magazines, Dolan, sounding like a gung-ho Internet content provider plucked from two years ago, answered that ?It's habit-forming. You keep checking on VOD to see what's new.? Dolan, the cable visionary who helped found HBO, is convinced that if Cablevision is a ?well-branded editorialist,? subscribers will follow, adding that there's no future in battling over subscribers Charlie Ergen-style, via price wars.
Other speakers, such as Incanta CEO Maggie Bellville, played the role of cheerleader, urging operators to roll out broadband capability fully. ?I want you to be able to deliver the services that customers want,? she said, citing in a challenging tone the results of an Incanta survey indicating that consumers will buy those services ?from whoever delivers [them] first.?
In a Thursday panel (?Cool & Profitable New Stuff?), Weather Channel EVP-strategy and development Bahns Stanley said that, for its part, the Weather Channel would stay away from investing fully in broadband until there are 20 million broadband subscribers. Carmel Group estimates that there are 9.5 million residential broadband subscribers right now.
Meanwhile, though, as banner ads have gone the way of parachute pants, Weather.com is running brief video advertisements that, he says, are drawing $50 per thousand viewers.
Some operators aren't as cavalier as Incanta's Bellville. ?Traditional cable customers are still very satisfied,? said Robert B. Watson, Time Warner Cable New York director of programming and new business development. Operators are looking for the killer app that broadband will bring them, but ?it's still sort of amorphous,? he says. Conferences like CTAM's Broadband Opportunity, where ?Somebody's laid out a big buffet for us,? Watson says, let operators remain aware of what content providers are capable of. Now, he says, ?we have to decide.?
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