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CABLE WORLD STAFF
Gossip and tire-kicking, not news, rule Show Several years ago a columnist for one of the many trades covering the television industry sat down the week before a major conference and wrote a post-convention wrap-up piece about the atmosphere at the show. That may not replace the traditional definition of chutzpah (the kid who kills his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court).
In a wild Western Show week with long days and late nights it was tempting to write that boilerplate story ("anxiety mixed with enthusiasm pervaded the show"), especially since the show is only half over as I write this.
It's also especially tricky because people are forever coming up to reporters and editors at these shows and asking, "What's the big story here?" The truth is most of the time there is no "big story." The general sessions usually - with some notable exceptions - produce little in the way of revelations and the major programming announcements have gone the way of the budget-busting parties (except for Romance this year).
The Western Show has become a tech-dominated show with little real tech news. Emerging companies use the platform to try to get exposure for their products, and established vendors realize major announcements will just get lost in the flood of press releases that jam the press rooms and reporters' e-mail boxes.
CableNet now dominates the show with tech booths crowded by curious cable operators, financial types, reporters, content developers and rivals who kick the tires of the newest products and try to figure out how it all fits together. Attendees also checked out the infant streaming media content and mulled over whether TV viewers will want to watch it through digital set-tops.
Confusion reigns these days in the fast-changing cable-broadband industry, and the shows have become a useful way to try to sort it all out. It's often a fruitless task as attendees scratch their heads and wonder what the latest integration deal means or how significant that deployment announcement with a cable operator is.
The truth is most of the integration releases (middleware or hardware vendor Brand X announces it can now port to Platform or Product Y) are fairly routine and generally just represent an attempt to gain some ink in a show with little real news.
People have become a bit jaded from major announcements made at past shows that never panned out or are still in the struggling stage. Alliances that frayed or hot products that take longer than expected to reach primetime linger on the minds of everyone who has been at a few of these confabs.
Most of the "news" people talk about here actually happen outside the show:
- Will AT&T really sell off some systems to lighten its debt load? (Not for now.)
- What does AT&T's decision to halt vendor purchases really mean? (Very little. Anyone with a whit of institutional history will realize it happens all the time to the giant MSO and others at the end of the year.)
- What about the stagnant cable stocks? (Addressed in the opening general session where Barry Diller, John Malone, Dan Somers and Michael Willner all sought to reassure investors that the long-term prospects for cable equities were excellent. So what else is new? A major reason for these shows is to hype the industry for Wall Street and Silicon Valley in order to prop up stocks and keep the money spigot open.)
While little news is actually made at the show, the conference does act as a huge Town Square where residents trade gossip, opinions, insights, etc. on the latest news. What's going to happen to BET under Viacom? Is Playboy really doing an explicit porn channel? Which will end first: the election or the endless review of the AOL Time Warner merger?
Speaking of the election, I found little real enthusiasm among people here to discuss the Gore-Bush bash. Too bad since this is the most fascinating and important story since Watergate. I can't get enough, especially on MSNBC, which is doing an excellent and balanced job in its wall-to-wall coverage, helping to sort out the chaos. And they can quote me.
One thing I had more than my fill of was The Bandies, the inaugural awards presentation for the broadband industry. The show (at which I was a presenter last week) fulfilled every bad stereotype of the genre.
The "host" was a jaded, wise-cracking, animated, computer- generated character named "Tude," pronounced "Tude." Get it? I kept hoping the cartoon would break into an impression of Officer Toody from Car 54. ("Ooh-ooh, Muldoon!") Alas.
The script for "Tude" was corny, decidedly unfunny and downright silly. The show started 25 minutes late, ran long and was tiresome. A comedian did a mediocre impression of Jerry Seinfeld, and most of the presenters were given corny lines to read.
Larry Oliver of The Cahners Group had to read an awful joke on the similarity between his name and Sir Laurence Olivier. Fred Thomas Jr. ran everyone through a rendition of "Wasssssup." I got off relatively easy.
But congratulations to the winners.
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