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by Dave Morgan
, Featured Contributor,
November 13, 2008
I spent the beginning of this week in Boston attending the annual conference and trade show of CTAM, the Cable Television Affiliate Marketers trade association. I hadn't been to a cable meeting
in years, so I spent a lot of time just watching and listening and trying to take the pulse of the industry.
It was a very good conference with some very good speakers. And, for someone that
has spent most of the past years attending conferences focused on the Internet, I heard a lot of folks and perspectives that I hadn't before. Here's my brief report:
Mood of tentativeness. The folks at the conference were generally positive and certainly quite focused, but there was an air of tentativeness. I'm sure that
concerns about the economy contributed to that, but it also seemed to go deeper. It seemed that the fundamental issues of Internet bypass and abundant content that are facing all media and
communications companies kept folks in check a bit. Please understand, there was by no means "doom and gloom," but folks were certainly a bit on edge about the future.
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Internet concerns. The challenges and opportunities presented by the Internet were big points of discussion throughout the conference. Obviously, since operators
have developed very strong revenue streams around selling Internet access, concerns about how the Internet might undermine their exclusive content distribution franchises was on the top of
everyone's minds. This issue is clearly going to be a growing one for these folks over time.
Google talk. Yes. It is impossible to go to
any conference in any business these days and not have folks talking about Google. Some positive; some wary. Pretty much par for the course.
Advertising uncertainty. There was lots of uncertainly around advertising. For one, questions about the economy and some of the recent earning announcements are
causing angst for many in the industry. Of course, they're all very happy not to be in the newspaper, magazine or broadcast television businesses. In addition, while there has been much hope for
the development of robust advertising sales channels and revenue streams for cable operators, that business hasn't really taken shape yet for them. In fact, many of their ad businesses are
actually going backwards given the heavy focus on spend from local auto, retail and consumer finance advertisers, all of whom have been hit very hard in this
economy.
Lots of hope for Canoe. There was a lot of talk about Canoe Ventures, the much-discussed consortium among the six largest cable operators to
build advanced advertising capabilities across the entire cable television ecosystem. While the Canoe executives who presented at the conference did their best to temper expectations, they are still
there, particularly given the lukewarm results that operators have been able to create with their ad sales efforts to date. Certainly, this is going to be a key pressure point in the industry over the
next year or so.
Lots of hope for data. Similar to the issue with Canoe, there is a lot of hope from cable operators that all of the consumer
data that they capture in delivering video and communications services to homes will result in new revenue streams from the sale or utilization of that data, whether it is from set-top boxes or
billing systems. Once again, this looks to be another "wait and see" issue. Lots of potential; lots of hope. Probably lots of time to wait.
All in all, my view is that the
cable industry is in pretty good health and very well-positioned for the future. Both the operators and programmers are certainly facing some areas of turbulent transition, but those that are smart
and focused and innovative are likely to do well for a long time. What do you think?
