• by Wayne Friedman , March 20, 2017

Veteran Comcast Cable industry executive Dave Watson has been named president and chief executive officer of the company, the largest U.S. cable operator.

Watson replaces Neil Smit, who becomes vice chairman of Comcast Corp. starting April 1. Smit has been the head of Comcast Cable for seven years, and also had senior positions at Charter Communications, AOL, and Nabisco.

Watson had been COO of Comcast Cable since 2010, joining Comcast in 1991. He has held many senior roles at Comcast, including heading up of the product, sales, marketing and advertising functions.

Brian Roberts, chairman/CEO of Comcast Corp. stated: “There are few people in the cable industry who have his breadth and depth of experience. Dave, along with Neil... have led to phenomenal growth over the last several years, as well as our focus on the customer experience and the improvements we have made recently.”

Comcast credits Watson in major industry’s transitions -- moving to digital operations from analog, pushing high-speed Internet, expansion into commercial business services.

Currently, Comcast has 22.5 million cable video subscribers and 24.7 million Internet customers, as well as 11.7 million phone/voice subscribers.