Los Angeles — Cox Communications president Patrick Esser argued on Thursday for the standardization of industry platforms and the need for players to work together.

“I’m a believer that the more the industry works in a cooperative fashion; the more we work on creating standardized platforms; the more we look for universal solutions, all votes rise and we’re in a better place,” said Esser during a general session conversation on the “Influencers and Innovators on the Future of Media” at The Cable Show 2014 in Los Angeles.

Esser was joined on stage by Rob Lloyd, president of development and sales of Cisco Systems and moderator Jon Fortt, on-air editor at CNBC.

“We are all going to have to move to a new model,” said Lloyd. “A new kind of thinking. That movement is underway right now. I can tell you it is underway right now amongst the people here.”

The model Lloyd referred to is the cloud, which is the applications that are used to connect various technologies. 

One way the cloud will likely come into play is through our televisions. Consumers are already seeing this to a degree with Smart TVs, where the set is able to communicate with other devices in the home, such as computers, phones, stereos, etc.

But the industry still has work to do.

“We just all need to focus on innovation,” said Lloyd. “Consumers just want to see service innovation. They want to see things that are solving their problems. They want new experiences. And I would leave it alone and say let’s just focus on those that own the network actually have the chance right now as these trends emerge to actually make the network matter and deliver more services.”

Esser echoed Lloyd’s sentiments and took them a step further by talking about Cox’s pledge to its customers.

“Our customers will have access to all of the product that’s out there on the Internet,” said Esser. “That is our promise. That is what we’re doing. We are not blocking anything. It’s the worst thing I possibly could ever do.”

In keeping with one of the primary themes at Cable Show 2014, Charter CMO Jonathan Hargis posed the question "whose brand" is TV Everywhere to a  group of affiliate marketing executives.

The MSO executive, noting the technical, pass word and authentication issues that currently surround the platform, as well as the growing number of networks that are leaning into it, advocated for “TVE simple,” where one password would open the door through the distributor to the array of content.

Jamia Bigalow, senior vice president of distribution marketing at Fox Networks  started by saying it “can be both,” with aggregated customer experiences through cable operators. But for customers who want a deeper dive into the content, they likely want to gravitate to the networks’ TVE gambits that offer additional quality content.

Speaking on the "An Evolution in Distribution: The New Face of Network Affiliate Marketing" panel, Bigalow said TVE is a valuable tool to keep customers within the current pay-tv ecosystem. Or if they're outside, “to bring them back in.”

Chris Brush, Disney and ESPN Media Networks senior vice president affiliate sales, said the company doesn’t care how viewers access content across the company’s Watch portfolio, as long as “we get them into the process.” 

Brush told Hargis that he recognized that Charter as an operator has 50 different campaigns to contend with at any given time and that "you don’t have the assets, the resources", to fully promote TVE. As such, he said it’s "important to be at the table with you to try and provide solutions, and support on the technical and contractual sides. I know that’s not an answer, but we recognize the challenge."

Brush said two years ago ESPN created a program for operators using its Monday Night Football announce team of Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden on how viewers could use Watch ESPN. “We have resources and need to be creative to help. We need to double down on that,” he said.

Laura Palmer, senior vice president of distributor marketing at Showtime Networks, said “we’re very early in the process. It’s exciting. We need to give consumers a choice."  She noted some prefer an aggregated approach, while others are more inclined toward branded network platforms. "Some may want both, I don’t think we know yet. Let's give them choices, get them into the experience. We want them to watch Showtime; it’s a common goal."

That being said, Palmer said it’s a marketing challenge to convey TVE messages to consumers. At the same time, she believes that operational and password issues will get resolved on “a parallel path” as marketing solutions emerge.

Rori Peters, senior vice president of national account and field sales strategy at TV One, said that TVE holds various challenges for an independent network. “There are technical issues, and the processes involved to getting the content rights,” she said.

But those are not reasons for “authentication to be complicated for consumers. At the end of the day, we have the same goal: to maintain our relationship with consumers, so that they don’t go somewhere else. The consumer is king for both of us. We don’t want them to go to a different provider.”

Hargis also steered the conversation to social media and its role in affiliate marketing today.  For one thing, the panelists concurred that at this stage it’s still a relatively inexpensive marketing tool.

Brush reeled off some impressive stats, saying ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars series was the most tweeted at show last year, its season four premiere the most-tweeted episode, and that ESPN drives 17% of all social conversation on all TV networks.  “There’s a lot of news on the sports side, that’s something we’re going to continue use as a company.”

Peters said social is one way the independent network attempts to cut through the clutter. TV One uses its own social tactics with subscribers, and also relies on its talent leveraging their relationships with viewers to make them aware of the programming and the direction the network is going.

Bigalow said social is exploding and it's a challenge managing  all of the “syndicated content.” She said the the MPVDs  “love to have it,” from sweepstakes and quizzes, to engagement and building ties to the providers' brands. We're trying to get our heads around it, so we don’t have to have three different people working there.”

Showtime, according to Palmer, looks at social as “the next wave of consultative marketing” with its distribution partners for all platforms, with the premium network endeavoring to packaging and promoting its content through different outlets. .

She also noted that Showtime develops special content that can help each affiliate, depending on whether a distributor is interested in enhancing engagement or increasing its Facebook likes.  “Depending on the goal, we can come up with a program,” she said. “Social is a tremendous opportunity of which we are only scratching the surface. We’re focusing more resources on that.”

Los Angeles --Against the backdrop of CTAM’s push for an industry-wide marketing effort to promote and establish best practices, including sign-in for “tv everywhere,” industry executives gathered at a Cable Show panel here Wednesday to discuss the state of the platform.

The consensus is that the industry -- programmers and distributors alike -- are making progress, especially on the content availability front, but much works remain when it comes to awareness and ease of authentication.

To that end, CTAM president and CEO John Lansing, the moderator of “Now Playing on Any Screen: What’s Now & What’s Next in TV Everywhere,” asserted the group’s goals of raising awareness among pay video subscribers from 17% at the end of 2013 to 50% by the conclusion of this year; lift usage to 50% among that expanded set; and to get 75% of its members to support a uniform sign-up process.

Matt Strauss, senior vice president and general manager video services at Comcast Cable, said there isn’t a programmer out there that “isn’t leaning into tv everywhere,” and that industry has critical mass in terms of available fare. He also said strides  have been made in terms of facilitating verification, pointing toward Comcast’s use of customers’ email accounts, Facebook credentials and auto-IP identification.

“Making authentication easy is one of our key goals,” he said.  Strauss and A&E Networks' Mark Garner are the co-chairmen of the CTAM steering committee on tve.

The panelists agreed that tve awareness was high for a couple of recent sporting events.

Ron Lamprecht, executive vice president of distribution, NBCUniversal, said the programmer has come a long way since the Vancouver Winter Olympics when it was on “the bleeding edge and there wasn’t’ much awareness” of the tve platform. That jumped considerably by the 2012 London Summer Games, and the Sochi Olympics surpassed expectations with a 50% authentication success rate, not to mention 2.2 million streams for U.S.-Russia hockey game, a total that surpasses the 2.1 million for verification-free Super Bowl XLVI.

Jeremy Legg, senior vice president development and multiplatform distribution at Turner Broadcasting System, also reported strong numbers from the 2014 men’s basketball tournament. NCAA March Madness Live dunked 69 million video streams for this year’s tourney, with an 85% authentication success rate from video subs of TBS, TNT and truTV.

While these events raise the bar for tve and underline its potential, the challenge is to get more users involved outside of these galvanizing moments.

Michael Angus, senior vice president and general manager of Time Warner Cable, said such tentpoles events bring customers into the tve arena, where they “can snack on content and then get them hooked.”  Credentialing begins there for the video subscribers, and then it’s easy to get their kids signed up for the application for Cartoon Network.

He said Time Warner Cable has flipped the "abandon" rate, with its authentication ratio now in the 80% range. Collectively the industry, he said, must work toward making the process “friction-free.”

Tamara Franklin, executive vice president of digital at Scripps Networks Interactive, said that while the Knoxville, Tenn.-headquartered programmer doesn’t offer scripted fare or sports, it still draws 94% of its audience within the live+3 viewing window, a ratio that has benefited from tve's arrival..

She said that Mad Men or sports might be the first option on the primary TV in the household, but with the availability of tve programming on other devices, Scripps's passionate lifestyle viewers can stay abreast of their favorites. “It helps us that there is less DVR watching and more live viewing,” she said.

All of the panelists concurred on the value of tve and its role in maintaining the current programmer/MPVD ecosystem. Lansing asked the executives to rate the importance of tve on a scale of 1 to 5.

“Five,” Angus quickly replied. Franklin agreed: “It’s the future of our industry.”

Lamprecht weighed in by saying NBCU is “all in.”

Legg upped the ante to “six,” before Strauss put the final bid at “seven.”

For writers and producers looking to tell “grown-up” stories with complex characters, cable is a place where they prefer to work.

“The beauty of being on cable is that it’s so open. You can do whatever you want,” said Michelle Ashford, creator, writer and executive producer of Showtime’s Masters of Sex.

Noah Hawley, writer and executive producer and showrunner of FX’s Fargo, says he’s had the network ask if he could make his show darker and more morally ambiguous.

‘’There are no limits on what your characters can do or say,” he said, adding that at FX “they want you to make a great show because that’s the brand of the network.”

Richard LaGravenese, co-creator, writer and executive producer of The Divide, coming to WE tv, says that while broadcast networks liked their characters good or evil, black or white. “What’s wonderful is how audiences are responding to characters who are morally ambiguous. You can see how audiences are loving people like Walter White and Tony Soprano.”

Earlier in her career, Ashford spent a lot of time working on network TV. ‘I felt stifled as a writer. It felt very dissatisfying,’’ she said. That was the year The Sopranos came out. “I remember thinking, oh my God, that’s what you can do,” and she started working in cable.

These days, more people are watching shows time delayed, in binges or on digital devices, but the people who create the shows “don’t consider that. It’s still about telling the story,” said LaGravenese. He says how people watch shows amazes him. “They’re multitasking and still follow the story.”

“You have to put your head down and do your work,” and not think about how shows get disseminated. Ashford added. “It’s madness out there. If we think that people are watching on their phone, it’s discouraging. You can’t take that into account.”

At the same time, the ability to watch shows whenever viewers want and as often as they want, means shows get more scrutiny from viewers. “They’ll see things we didn’t intend or notice ourselves. They can control how they watch and how many times they watch. It’s a very aware public out there,” Ashford said.

That also affects the way shows get measured, minimizing the agita that can come from overnight ratings. “Our last episode when up 100% over seven days,” Hawley said.

Cable shows also have an advantage in producing only a dozen or so episodes per season, compared to more than 20 for broadcast because it attract actors like Billy Bob Thornton, who also want to have time to do other projects over the course of a year.

Cable’s quality programming binge will continue “as long as it’s a profit generating renaissance,” Hawley said. “Will we reach a point of oversaturation? It’s hard to say with Yahoo and the digital companies getting into the business at the same time. You can’t work about that. You just tell your story."

Los Angeles--Smart-home services are gaining popularity among consumers, but it is too soon to tell whether they will ever achieve the popularity that the core services offered by cable providers have achieved, according to Adam Mayer, vice president and general managers, Intelligent Home, Time Warner Cable.

“Will it get to be as big as voice, video or data?” Mayer asked Wednesday during the panel "Home, Smart Home: Illuminating Cable’s Newest Residential Connection at the Cable Show here Wednesday. “We certainly hope so. I can’t predict what the number of subs will be. I’ll just say that Time Warner Cable, a twenty-plus billion dollar company, wouldn’t be in the space and dedicating the resources we dedicated—human, financial, time—if we didn’t think this was going to move the needle.”

Moore was joined at the panel by Joe Appio, vice president, home management, Mediacom Communications; Kristine Faulkner, vice president and general manager, home security and smart home, Cox Communications; Gregg Grigaitis, vice president, advanced technology, Suddenlink Communications; and Daniel Herscovici, vice president, Xfinity Home, Comcast Communications.

Michael Wolf, founder and chief analyst, NextMarket Insights, served as moderator. Wolf raised the question early on as to why customers should turn to cable companies for smart-home services, which often are included in home-security packages.

“For us to have robust broadband service and be able to take that internet service through a natural evolution of putting devices like this on it, I think is natural for us as the broadband provider,” Appio said. “This is just another subset of that.”

Smart home technology is not new, as Wolf pointed out, noting that it dates back as far as the ’70s. He cited examples of failed smart-home efforts from a decade ago, such as refrigerators with Java software installed in them.

Grigaitis said better product integration makes now a more fertile time for smart-home services to take root.

“Most things, when they first start out, are silos of technology,” he said. “That smart refrigerator probably communicated with nothing else. Now, with the vendors that are out there in the ecosystem, there’s really a fabric of communication for all the devices.”

Wolf also asked about security concerns. Faulkner cited recent news reports about a hacker taking control of a baby monitor in an Ohio couple’s home, screaming at the couple’s 10-month-old daughter through the monitor’s audio system and moving the monitor's camera remotely.

“Those kinds of stories are going to get heavy ripple effect, and I think they’re early indicators of the complexity as we look forward in terms of security,” Faulkner said. “We all are from businesses where security has been a foundation of a our thinking already.”

Los Angeles-- As more consumers view television content on digital platforms, networks and distributors are slowly but surely convincing advertisers to follow those viewers, helping to monetize those viewers.

At panel discussion at the Cable Show here Tuesday, executives talked about the opportunities in multiplatform advertising and some of the challenges the industry still faces in selling ads against non-traditional viewing.

“There’s been an explosion of ways to consume content, both TV content and made for digital content,” said Krishan Bhatia, executive vice president of strategy and operations at NBCUniversal. 

Bhatia said that between 5% and 15% of the consumption of NBCU shows happens on digital platforms. “We want our advertisers to benefit from that consumption,’ he said.

Some TV advertisers are looking to expand their reach while associating their brands with NBCU content and running campaigns across platforms, he said. There are also digital advertisers who want to associated with digital content on digital platforms.

At ESPN, digital consumption of live programming doesn’t cannibalize traditional TV viewing, said Eric Johnson, executive vice president of multiplatform sales at ESPN.

“It’s all additive,” Johnson said. “It is really important for ESPN to e the second screen for all sports. We’re spending more time and investment to make sure we understand what the effectiveness of the advertising.”

VOD is a platform with growing viewership that advertisers are beginning to show interest in. Joel Hassell, CEO of Canoe Ventures said that in the last four months of 2012, Canoe did 100 million ad insertions. “We do that in three days now. By June, we’ll e doing one billion insertions a month,” he said. “There’s a lot of money in it for the programmers. It’s real dollars.”

Rob Holmes, vice president of advanced advertising at Comcast Cable, said that advertisers should be interested in VOD viewers. “People are committed to the viewing.  You’re not channel surfing. There’s less fast-forwarding for a variety of reasons,’’ he said, adding that VOD viewers tend to e younger, wealthier and better educated.

While a very attractive picture was painted of advertising on digital platforms, some ad buyers and clients are resisting.

There are still measurement issues, with different sources providing different types of data.

“Advertisers are increasingly becoming comfortable with data from other providers, set top box data and other types of data,” Holmes said.

But there are also still many advertisers and ad buyers who just aren’t familiar with VOD advertising, said Hassell.  He said Canoe held an event about VOD advertising at Time Warner Cable’s facilities in New York. “I was stunned at how little was known about [VOD]. We have to continue to educate the agencies to make sure they understand what this space is capable of.”

Bhatia said NBCU was using the upfront period to go on an agency road show about how viewing is changing. “By the time you get to the upfront you’re conducting negotiations on price and volume and it’s too late to do education,” he said.

“You’ve got to find the simplicity,” ESPN’s Johnson added. “The [media buying] system rejects the complicated. “

But the best line of the evening came when Canoe’s Hassell was asked about interactive advertising. “Interactive will always have a great future, which is why we got out that business.”

Los Angeles -- “Understanding how consumers use the device is one of our biggest challenges,” Alix Cotrell acknowledged during the Cable Show panel session “Breakthroughs in Content Navigation and Customer Experience” here Tuesday.

Cotrell, vice president of TWC-TV at Time Warner Cable, explained that studies of how viewers use advanced remote controls and new set-top boxes generated important “feedback about going directly to a channel,” especially in converged environments where linear and on-demand content is available. “300 channels are a lot to navigate,” she said.

The five MSO executives on the panel generally agreed about the limitations of legacy set-top boxes and their interests in new hardware that consumers can easily use.  Long-discussed options, such as voice commands, are still appealing, but not likely to be implemented soon, they agreed.  Most significantly, viewer habits are often hard to break.

“We had been limited by the technology of the STB,” Cotrell added, describing it as “an ancient computer with very little memory.”  She pointed out that newer devices have “transformed how our whole industry approaches product development because of all the platforms available.”

Dane Dickie, VP-converged services and user experience design, Cox Communications, described touch-screen interfaces that listed program titles in “tappable” text.

“It’s still not intuitive,” he said. “People are used to going to poster art or a button.  He said that ongoing tests reveal that new paradigms are at first rejected, but eventually they may catch on.  Dickie explained that “we had (to use) a lot of technology” to develop successful interfaces.

All of the panelists agreed that extensive testing is vital in the creation of usability for the increasingly expansive and often confusing content options.

“We do user testing, usability testing, in-home testing and market trials, explained Thomas Loretan, vice president/creative director-user experience and product design at Comcast.  That methodology provides a “progression” that helps Comcast determine “how to roll out” new features. Loretan stressed the need to be “sensitive to customers who have been on cable for a number of years.”

“It takes time to transition them” to new interfaces and features, he said. “We do a lot more with the user interface on the screen now.”

Rich DiGeronimo, senior vice president of product and strategy, Charter Communications, also focused on the new requirements for interface development.

“We’re spending most of our time on information architecture,” he said.  “We need to find out how easy it is to navigate, to see how people naturally flow” amongst on-screen content.  Like others on the panel, DiGeronimo acknowledged the complexity of developing products for multiscreen experiences via tablets and smartphone handsets.

He also expressed hope that old set-top boxes may find new life, even without installing digital terminal adapters to implement new options.

“We’re very bullish about how to bring legacy boxes back to life,” DiGeronimo said. “We’re putting STBs at every outlet.  We think it’s ground-breaking.”  

The panelists agreed that the continuing introduction of content and technology requires more frequent up-dating, including new apps and software upgrades.

“We update three or four times per year, but do not usually [make] radical changes,” explained Mark Mihalevich, vice president o marketing, Suddenlink Communications. Noting the introduction of online content plus services such as home automation, Mihalevich emphasized that, “There has been quite a change in the last few years” adding to the challenge of managing the user experience.

“We really believe that having an experience that gives customers access to all the content they want is important,” he said.

Los Angeles -- While Netflix and other over-the-top viewers have been lauded for allowing viewers to catch up on episodes and seasons of top original series, programming executives at Cable Show contend their services have been ahead of that curve.  

Kevin Bennett, executive vice president and general manager of Investigation Discovery, ,American Heroes and Destination America, speaking at panel here Tuesday afternoon, said that entrance of new competitors has underscored the value of stacking and marathon strategies, and overall genre-focused fare. He said that what ID’s audience wants is mystery and suspense content 24/7. “We’re providing binge-viewing all the time,” said Bennett.

Mark Robichaux, editor in chief of Multichannel News, moderated the panel, entitled “Staying Power: Business Strategies for Linear Television.”

Kathleen Finch, president of HGTV, DIY Network and Great American Country, said Scripps “started binge viewing,” noting that when people are interested in shows about cooking they turn to Food Network, when they’re interested in home renovation, HGTV is the destination.  She noted that whether stacking or building series, Scripps services offers genre fare that viewers always want.  To that end, she said the company presents a number of spinoffs, citing the five different iterations and 400 episodes of House Hunters. This consistency of scheduling/programming “keeps us in business, attracts women, mostly upscale. This predates Netflix.”

The third member of the panel, David Nathanson, general manager and COO of Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2, discussed a somewhat different construct under which Fox Sports converted the motor sports-focused Speed and action sports/UFC proponent Fuel into the respective general sports services last Aug. 17.

“We felt there was an opportunity to compete for a broader audience. There are still plenty of hyper-niches in the digital world,” he said, noting that “not every sport works nationally.”

Although FS1 and FS2 now proffer an array of sports properties, Nathanson said they are being guided in similar manners to services at Discovery and Scripps. “It’s a very long-term view. We’ve invested in rights deals that are 10-years plus in some cases, so we’re building an asset and brand and that takes time.”

Nathanson said there was consistency in approach across Fox Sports properties in their commitment to the highest production values and on-air innovation. He also talked about the programmer’s commitment to being fan-friendly, pointing out that Fox NFL Sunday has been number one pro football pregame show for 17 years running because its on-air talent is “irreverent and have fun. The Fox attitude distinguishes us; it’s ingrained in our DNA.”

Finch said Scripps has templates and its key demo in mind as it makes programming choices. She said HGTV has “an enviable audience,” -- its been the top network among upscale women for seven consecutive years.  As such, HGTV executives are looking to households that own their own homes, are college- educated and hold white-collar gigs. 

She said HGTV programs to that very specific target and avoids shows that “skew off those rails.” In evaluating a series the network doesn’t want a series that garner a C or D county audience. “It might do equal household numbers, but no so in the demo.”

Bennett said ID is more genre-based than demo-focused: “We want people that like the mystery and suspense genre. That cuts across a wide spectrum of all demo blocks, including those residing in C and D counties.”

Pointing to the recent rebranding of the American Heroes service, he said the old joke was that if a husband wanted his wife to leave the room, he’d say he was watching, its forbear, the Military Channel. With the name change and the service retaining much of the same schedule, women in focus groups now say they would tune in American Heroes.  “But when we asked them, ‘Would you watch Military?’ They would say, ‘No, that’s not for me.’ ”

Bennett said “we want to get more people into the tent and then give them what they want. We’ll let the sales people sort out the demos.”

Nathanson said that he disliked all of the focus on the various median ages and demo division of the different sports because that way of thinking “neglects to recognize what we can deliver. The number one show for women is the NFL.” He said U.S. Open Golf, which will tee on Fox Sports for the first time in 2015, skews a little older and toward the high end of the income scale, but that doesn’t mean it won’t attract others. Along those lines, he said NASCAR attracts more women than most people would think.

Fox Sports, he said, has appeal for viewers from cradle to the grave, with younger viewers favoring soccer and Street League Skateboarding. He cited different audiences for college football and basketball, for UFC, NASCAR and golf. “We cover either end of the spectrum audience, which we’re looking to broaden. We’re the opposite of Kathleen.”

Look for FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to defend his new network neutrality rules in his speech at Cable Show 2014 on Wednesday morning. He will tell his cable audience that if anyone is looking to celebrate his supposed gutting of the Open Internet rules, they can "put away the party hats."

He will also say that that if anyone tries to divide the Internet 'haves' and 'have nots,' he will not hesitate to use Title II reclassification if he feels it is warranted.

According to his prepared remarks, Wheeler, himself a former president of NCTA, will underscore that any Open Internet rules the FCC produces will be tough, enforceable and lay to rest misconceptions about what the proposal is meant to accomplish, said an FCC official speaking on background.

He will also remind the cable audience that the federal appeals court that remanded the rules back to the FCC concluded that "broadband providers represent a threat to Internet openness” and have “incentives to interfere” with competitors.

The chairman will make the case that the commission needs to act quickly to get legally sustainable rules on the books to insure that consumers, entrepreneurs and innovators have the protections they need. 

Here is an excerpt from the chairman's prepared remarks, obtained by Multichannel News.

"If you read some of the press accounts about what we propose to do, those of you who oppose net neutrality might feel like a celebration was in order. Reports that we are gutting the Open Internet rules are incorrect. I am here to say “wait a minute.” Put away the party hats. The Open Internet rules will be tough, enforceable and, with the concurrence of my colleagues, in place with dispatch."

There has been a great deal of talk about how our following the court’s instruction to use a “commercially reasonable” test could result in a so-called “fast lane” and Internet “haves” and “have-nots.” This misses the point that any new rule will ensure an open pathway that is sufficiently robust to enable consumers to access the content, services and applications they demand and ensure innovators and edge providers are able to offer new products and services.

"Put another way, the focus of this proposal – on which we are seeking comment – is on maintaining a broadly available, fast and robust Internet as a platform for economic growth, innovation, competition, free expression, and broadband investment and deployment. Our goal is rules that will encourage broadband providers to continually upgrade service to all. We will follow the court’s blueprint for achieving this, and, I must warn you, will look skeptically on special exceptions.

"Let me be clear. If someone acts to divide the Internet between 'haves' and 'have nots,' we will use every power at our disposal to stop it. I consider that to include Title II. Just because it is my strong belief that following the court’s roadmap will produce similar protections more quickly, does not mean I will hesitate to use Title II if warranted. And, in our Notice, we are asking for input as to whether this approach should be used."

After launching in Latin America last fall, ¡HOLA! TV will establish a Stateside beachhead with its DirecTV debut on May 1.

The Spanish-language proponent of entertainment and celebrity news and lifestyles will be available on the DBS leader’s Mas Latino and Mas Ultra packages on channel 430, bringing an array of original content and acquired fare to Latina viewers.

The rollout continues the brand’s expansion from print – it has 34 ¡HOLA! editions worldwide, including in Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. – to the linear TV realm. Last September, ¡HOLA! TV, through a deal with DirecTV, bowed in Argentina, Puerto Rico Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela. Since then, it has inked affiliate agreements with Telefonica (Chile and Venezuela), Aster (Dominican Republic), TuVes (Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru) and Intercable DTH (Venezuela).  ¡HOLA! TV is a joint venture between Spanish media conglomerate Atresmedia Television and HOLA! magazine

All told, Ignacio Sanz de Acedo, CEO and general manager for ¡HOLA! TV, said the service now counts some 4.5 million subs in the Caribbean and South America, and it's in conversations for carriage in Mexico.  

Sanz de Acedo said the DirecTV debut “expands our reach to new audiences and to our loyal ¡HOLA! magazine fans throughout the United States.” 

He would not disclose ¡HOLA! TV's domestic license fee with DirecTV, but said it was “a standard multiyear deal that aligned the brand value of the programming on the network.”

“We are pleased to be the first to introduce ¡HOLA! TV to our Spanish-speaking customers across the U.S.,” said Emma Brackett, vice president, content and programming at DirecTV.  “¡HOLA! TV refreshing take on entertaining human-interest stories and original programming is a welcome addition to our Spanish-language programming lineup and will delight Hispanic customers everywhere.”

Beginning on May 1, DirecTV will be able to screen more than 500 annual hours of original production, emanating from four programs produced in Miami.

Hosted by Colombian María José Barraza, Mundo HOLA! is a weekday, one-hour magazine-style show that showcases interviews and in-depth looks at celebrities, movie stars, music, entertainment, fashion, royal families and internationally renowned athletes.

HOLA! Diario is a daily half-hour show in which Ana María Monroy provides a digest of the most important news from the entertainment world, spanning the U.S., Europe and Latin America.

For its part, the weekly half-hour show HOLALA!, hosted by Irene Sánchez, reviews the best feature stories published in the 10 Latin American editions of HOLA! magazine.

On En Exclusivo, celebrities and the affluent open their homes and their hearts to Lana Montalban, via a series of up-close and personal interviews.

Sanz de Acedo anticipates the the network will hold considerable appeal to women, whom he believe will comprise 65% of its U.S. audience.  He said the magazine has a U.S. presence, especially among the top 10 Hispanic DMAs.

As it builds its subscriber base, Sanz de Acedo expects the network will attract advertisers in the cosmetics, personal care and home goods categories, among others.

He noted that the launch is arriving sans a big marketing push, noting that the network is working with DirecTV to develop key marketing initiatives in select markets around the nation at key times of the year.

Sanz de Acedo said ¡HOLA! TV has held conversations with all key distribution players in the U.S. and he expressed confidence the service will score more carriage contracts.  Currently, ¡HOLA! TV, he said, is working toward overcoming competitive and pricing issues, and in some cases “a technical bar.”

Others, he said, are taking a wait-and-see approach. To that end, the network's positioning on the DirecTV packages, according to de Acedo, will provide it with a national calling card of sorts.

During the Cable Show in Los Angeles, Technicolor is showing off what the company is billing as the “world’s first `high-frame-rate’” UltraHD settop box.

The demonstration builds on the company’s demonstration of the first 4K set-top box last year. It will show 4K video at 60 frames per second for both cable and satellite networks during the convention from April 29 to May 1 in Los Angeles.

“Technicolor once again leads the market in offering the innovative technologies for the home that will enable the next leap in consumer viewing experiences,” said Michel Rahier, president of connected home at the vendor, “With the introduction of the industry’s first 4K/UHD unit last year, and today the first high-frame-rate 4K set-top box, Technicolor is connecting the next immersive viewing experience to the home, with the fidelity, quality and range of experience consumers demand.”

Los Angeles--The next steps in the evolution of digital multi-channel networks may take them away from YouTube and toward paid content, said Ashley Kaplan, head of content for Fullscreen.

“I think YouTube is a great marketing platform,” Kaplan said Tuesday at the Cable Show panel session "Born to Stream: The Economics and Ideals of Internet-Originated Television." “YouTube is a place where you can grow your audience, where it’s an engaged audience. I think if you’re looking at deficit financing premium content, it’s not a good place to spend your dollars.”

Kaplan was joined in the session — moderated by Comcast Ventures managing director Amy Banse — by StyleHaul founder, president and CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski and Tastemade Founder Joe Perez. Fullscreen, StyleHaul and Tastemade are all MCNs that began aggregating YouTube channels run by partner content creators but are now venturing into producing their own content.

Kaplan said that Fullscreen began as “a tech company creating products and scalable solutions for our creators,” but added that, as the company transitions into creating higher quality video programming it's "not going to program original content on YouTube. We will be evolving off of YouTube, and as that happens we will be creating for that platform.”

Horbaczewski said that for StyleHaul, YouTube remains the best platform for video. “There is no other platform right now that has anywhere near the audience or engagement,” she said. “This is the place to be for us.” She added that for StyleHaul, “the multi-platform conversation is across social platforms and not about moving video off of YouTube.”

One of the major challenges facing digital video producers is the sharp rise in mobile engagement. “We feel that YouTube is a massive platform for distribution of video, but we also feel that mobile is massive,” Perez said. “Most of our company is actually focused on mobile opportunities. But we don’t take the videos off of YouTube and put them on our own mobile properties and hide them away from YouTube. That’s just not smart. You have to be on YouTube.”

StyleHaul has ventured into long-form content, a step that Kaplan said Fullscreen will soon be making. But she insisted that YouTube’s economic model “just doesn’t allow for that.” Engagement was the watchword of the conversation, particularly when it came to younger viewers.

“Brands are seeing that they want to advertise to this younger audience and not all are of them are watching television,” Perez said.

And while all three execs were able to present stats illustrating how their engagement with younger audiences dwarfs that of many traditional media brands, they also admitted that challenges exist as well. One comes from the content creators, who drive those high levels of engagement with their native social-media skills and built-in marketing, and who are thus less easily influenced by networks.

“These creators have a lot more control with us than they do at traditional formats,” Horbaczewski said. “They have their own distribution platforms, they have their own success, they’re able to get their own viewership. They don’t need us to provide TV or a network.”

Another point of consensus was envy over cable’s dual revenue stream. According to Horbaczewski, YouTube has already alpha tested paid content, claiming the results were that “ninety percent of the revenue on that video came from people paying for it.” She added that YouTube has a beta version with more partners, including StyleHaul, planned for later this year. But, she said, "Paid, I don't know if [YouTube parent company] Google is where we want to do that. We'll see."

Kaplan was dubious of YouTube as a paid content platform.

“We love the cable model,” she said. “We think that we can evolve into something else. I don’t think it’s going to be on the YouTube platform.”

Los Angeles – While fears that disruptive technologies could erode the cable business have dogged the industry for years, the industry’s multi-billion investment in state of the art expandable infrastructure is proving to be the main differentiator, according to a panel of top Wall Street analysts at Cable Show 2014 here Tuesday.

The panel discussion entitled “Deal Me In: Financial Analysts on the Evolving Economics of Telecommunications was moderated by Cox Communications chief financial officer Mark Bowser.

“An awful lot of the technology going on right now, the advantage the cable operators have in their physical plant grows exponentially over the next couple of years,” said MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett. “I’m fairly skeptical that at this point there is enough time for the telcos to catch up. The cable industry is going to be gapping away.”

That includes Google, the search engine juggernaut that has grabbed headlines across the country with its Google Fiber ultra-high speed data service. Moffett said that while Google recognized about a decade ago that cable would be the only available high-capacity infrastructure in large parts of the country, which was part of the reasoning behind its decision to build out its network in several markets, he believes the ultimate motivation is different. 

Moffett said that in building a second competing high capacity network Google runs the risk of being “the goldmine next to the monopoly railroad.”

But Moffett said Google’s real agenda could be something else.

“Plan A has been ‘How do you drive a regulatory agenda around cable?,’” Moffett said.

But the analyst doesn’t believe that regulatory focus will center on traditional points like net neutrality.

“Google, like a lot of the people in the internet community are starting to think of the edge battles and net neutrality as yesterday’s war,” Moffett said. “They are shifting their attention to the ingest points – interconnection, paid peering – which provides an even bigger area of regulatory focus for Google in the next 10 years.”

J.P. Morgan analyst Phil Cusick agreed.

“If I had a high-margin, low capital intensity business like Google, why would I want to be a telecom carrier?” Cusick said.

While cable’s infrastructure is providing ammo in the fight against high-speed data competitors, its cost structure has also helped to serve as a barrier to some over-the-top competitors. Moffett remembered a visit to Intel Corp.’s OnCue OTT service, shortly before the company decided to pull the plug on the endeavor. Moffett said that at the time, Intel admitted that it was paying about 20% more for programming than the average cable operators had to agree to disable fast-forward for its multi-room DVR service, and they expected to eventually have high transport costs and its network was subject to latency issues.

“It took a long time for pragmatism to assert itself,” Moffett said.

Morgan Stanley media analyst Ben Swinburne said the real OTT threat could end up being Dish Network, which has said it expects to launch a $30 per month OTT product in the summer.

“One thing we’re watching is what Dish would do with its new Disney agreement,” Swinburne said. “We don’t look at Netflix as competition to pay TV, but a $30 service could be a game changer.”

The analysts were split on their predictions for rising programming costs, with Moffett taking a contrarian view to the rest of the panelists, who believed that the current rate of increases is unsustainable.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch media analyst Jessica Reif Cohen said the model won't last, especially as cable operators get bigger.

Cusick added that smaller operators have been passing through increases directly to customers, believing that “of people leave, we’ll catch them with broadband.”

But Moffett reminded that the industry has been complaining of high programming costs for more than 10 years.

“Anybody can do the math and say the affordability problem is untenable,” Moffett said. “I’m pessimistic about a moderation in programming acceleration.”

The panelists were in agreement on the benefits of Comcast’s pending merger with Time Warner Cable.  Reif Cohen noted that the union represents huge opportunities in business services, could finally jump-start interactive advertising and could help drive penetrations in traditional satellite TV markets like Los Angeles.

“If I was a satellite operator, I would be really nervous about this merger," Reif Cohen said.

Los Angeles – Turner Broadcasting Systems CEO John Martin threw down the TV Everywhere gauntlet at the 2014 Cable Show’s Opening General Session Tuesday, saying that for cable operators and networks to thrive, they need to simplify the way that customers access content from any device, anywhere and at any time.

“If there is a call to action at this show it is this: For programmers and distributors to work together to improve the consumer experience,” Martin said at the opening panel entitled Brought to You by Broadband: the Faster, Better, More Entertaining Future.”Authentication, or this concept of authenticated usage,  is a barrier to usage.”

Martin then guessed that most people can’t remember the operator-provider passwords for their TV Everywhere service.

“I have three homes with three different cable providers and I don’t know any of them,” Martin said. “I don’t have TV Everywhere because I can’t figure out how to use it. We have to work together, we have to make it easy, we have to make it consistent. I think the idea over the next five years to dramatically improve the availability and robustness of video on demand is the biggest opportunity that we together can create.”   

A+E Networks president and CEO Nancy Dubuc echoed Martin’s concern, noting that her networks’ TV Everywhere app has been downloaded more than 11 million times across its three core brands.

“But the authentication of those downloaded apps is not great and that means it is too difficult to do,” Dubuc said.

ESPN president and Disney Media Networks co-chairman John Skipper said the authentication process needs to be easier to complete.

“The people we are competing with in Silicon Valley, they do this by implication, once you have something they can sniff out the content and deliver it. We need to be just as easy as what they do.”

Time Warner Cable chairman and CEO Rob Marcus argued that cable operators have made great strides in making TV Everywhere more accessible. But he admitted there is work to be done.

Time Warner cable’s TWC TV app is now available on eight different platforms, including iOS, Android, Xbox and Samsung Smart TVs.

“I agree the process of authentication needs to be even easier, but the early returns are quite good,” Marcus said. “Last month we had 1 million unique users accessing our video product via something other than a set top box, I think is pretty significant.”

Dubuc added that programmers want to see TV Everywhere succeed, adding that without content, technology firms are “just building platforms.”

“We like the cable model, we like our dual revenue stream,” Dubuc said. “I don’t want it to go away.”

While programmers and distributors had no problem agreeing on the value of mobile content, they have been at loggerheads concerning the cost of that content to distributors. During the discussion, Suddenlink Communications CEO Jerry Kent echoed many distributors’ concerns that the high cost of programming could force operators to either drop networks or raise prices to a level that would squeeze a large segment of the population out of pay TV.

“I’m concerned we’re going to reach a tipping point, pricing some households out of the market,” Kent said. “We need to have the flexibility to offer more affordable types of packages.”

Kent said that doesn’t mean being able to offer ala carte, but being able to include and exclude certain networks from lower priced video offerings that would be attractive to customers.

Skipper and Martin added that the costs are rising for programmers, too, who have to compete with online outlets like Netflix, Amazon and Yahoo for content.

Skipper, while agreeing that ESPN is the priciest basic cable network, argued that it also delivers the most value. And it is that value that distributors and programmers alike should focus on.

“Our job is to create value and help distributors sell products in their markets,” Skipper said. “There is no doubt we’ve created the product with the most value. ESPN is the most expensive, but it is the most valuable. We work very hard with our partners to create value – we were the first in the market with authentication, w were the first in the market with an HD channel, we were the first in the market with a 3D channel. We’re open for business to do things to create value.”

Skipper also disputed claims that only a small portion of households actually watch ESPN, although all have to pay for it. He added that about 115 million people consume ESPN every week.

“This is a $70 billion business and we’re making money,” Skipper said, adding that distributors never complained about the price of the network when the entire cable pie was growing. “We’ve got to figure out how to sell the value of the pay TV subscriber. If you’re going to have a stagnant market we’re all going to have pressure. …We’ve got to figure out a way to grow the pie if we are going to remain together as a group.”

Marcus added that operators also need to press harder in getting customers to see the value they are currently getting from their cable subscription.

“We’re falling into the trap of focusing on programming costs,” Marcus said. “It is incumbent upon us to tout the value we provide to our video customers every day.”

He added that the average cable subscriber pays about 20 cents per viewing hour for his or her subscription.

“That’s well worth the price of admission,” he said.

We come together just once a year as a whole industry. We gather in person, in one place, and usually in just one building. When we look around, we see engineers, TV producers, marketers, technologists and more. Within eyesight, you can see just how much it takes to make cable tick.

At this year’s Cable Show in Los Angeles, we will be together once again to not only celebrate our successes and challenges, but also to make connections, consider new ideas and forecast our future. We are gathering as a community, one that is focused on a common goal.

But while we connect in one place just once a year, people in every corner of the country and world are connecting every second of the day with their own communities. Teachers in West Virginia are talking online to others in Nebraska to share learning tools and lesson plans. Friends in either corner of the country are watching their favorite program together while video chatting. And families are finding and greeting long-lost cousins an ocean away. They are sharing stories, their lives and interests with one another.

How does it all happen? They need networks — powerful and open networks — to connect. 

Cable’s man-made networks of wires, fiber, towers, poles, modems, routers and airwaves are the glue making these connections possible. Cable operators have invested more than $210 billion since 1996 to build and upgrade these robust networks that are available to 93 percent of American homes. The more than 400,000 miles of fiber-optic wires criss-crossing our nation are enough to circle the globe 16 times.

The power, potential and importance of the Internet is undisputed.  The Internet has become fundamental to business, education and everyday communication, and our society depends on it. Yet, it’s this essential nature that has fueled a heated discussion about if the Internet should be treated as a public utility like our roads, electricity and drinking water. If simplicity ruled, the argument for the public utility model would win. But when you take a closer look, our public utilities suffer from chronic underinvestment and are crumbling.

When you combine the funding needed to bring our nation’s highways, electric grid and drinking water pipes up to standard, the number approaches a staggering $2 trillion. No wonder that the former U.S. Secretary of Transportation called America “one big pothole.” Is this the fate that we want for the most important communications network of our era? I certainly don’t.

Not so ironically, while our nation’s public infrastructure has been falling into disrepair, America’s private Internet providers since the mid-90’s have invested $1.3 trillion to make our Internet world class. Private broadband investment in the U.S. has become the envy of the European Union which is scrambling to reshape its regulatory structure to give companies more incentive to invest and upgrade their networks.

But these networks are more than costly physical infrastructure. These networks are the conduits that enable our communities to share, learn and prosper. And let’s not forget about the hours of entertainment and the platform for creativity that the network has become.

When we deploy networks, we strengthen the bonds of families and communities.  We lay the platform for collaboration and learning. We find better stories and different ways to entertain. We spark the engines of business and innovation.

We build community.

Michael Powell is president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

WASHINGTON — National Cable & Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell has said that the phrase “cable” in NCTA does not convey the “breadth of who we are and what we do.”

But Powell, a self-described “geek” and frustrated artist, recently told Multichannel News Washington bureau chief John Eggerton the story of how lawyers for the industry’s main trade association came to seek Patent and Trademark Office protection of a potential new moniker. Here’s a clue: He was clueless.

An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

MCN: In 2000, the NCTA changed its name to remove “television.” In the past couple of years, you have been exploring taking “cable” out as well, but adding “Internet” and putting TV back in.

Michael Powell: We haven’t done anything, and let’s be clear there is no active committee or activity going on about our name.

But, one, I am a geek who loves brands and loves understanding what your identity is. There is an element of the cable brand I am troubled by.

MCN: What is that?

MP: I think it is incomplete. I think it has a certain meaning in the minds of consumers and a certain meaning in the minds of policymakers. And I think it underrepresents the breadth of what we are and what we do. We are not some old-fashioned cable industry. We are probably, now, the country’s most sophisticated full-service communications provider.

What do you call an industry that is the biggest WiFi provider in the country? What do you call an industry that is the leading broadband distributor in the country? What do you call an industry that also distributes the highest quality video that you can consume?

MCN: What do you call it?

MP: I don’t know, but I think I am always scratching on paper, like, “What would you call that thing that would more fairly represent the full breadth and beauty of what we have going on here?” If I had found it, we would have changed it already.

But when you pick up on this, you are picking up on Mike Powell, the frustrated artist trying to find the thing that I think gives fuller meaning to who we are.

I think the reason you saw Verizon find FiOS and Comcast find Xfinity more recently, and you see Cox and Contour, is that people know that there is a challenge. How do you evolve in understanding who you are, and brand that? 

We have a very storied history in cable and we should hold on to it because your history is important, but our struggle is to be perceived as a forward looking, future-looking brand and I would love to find fresher colors and fresher words and fresher symbols of that. And I will probably spend the next few years futzing around trying to find it.

MCN: But you did apply to the Patent and Trademark office to protect “NCTA The Internet & Television Association.”

MP: I will tell you a funny story. My staff will tell you I don’t have any trouble drawing up what I like.  I started using a terminology and logo in my slides and in my email, I invented my own signature block that was different from the standard one, and my staff got all nervous because they were like: “You’re running around and using a brand that doesn’t exist; we could be infringing somebody’s copyright.” And unbeknownst to me — nobody had told me, but the lawyers quietly went away and said: “Our crazy boss might show up one day and say this is our new brand. We’d better go copyright and trademark this.” And so they did.

I think the first time I heard it was trademarked was when you wrote about it. [Multichannel News did indeed track the filing, but we believe Steve Donohue of FierceCable was the first to report about it.]

I went downstairs and said, “You trademarked that?” And they said: “Yeah, we decided we’d better take control of it.”

Thanks for monitoring it. And when you have a trademark, you have a duty to exercise a trademark (see box), so on my desk are markups of some my new stationery that has it on it and, I don’t know, I like it.

Another thing. There is this cool little monicker, cable, but it doesn’t always distinguish between the industry and the association, so sometimes I find it a troubling brand because sometimes we want to say, “this is NCTA talking, this is the association’s brand.”

But when you say cable, it is murky. It is a brand that goes over the whole industry.  And I’m not the president of “cable” or the COO of the whole stinkin’ industry.

On March 28, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake rattled buildings and nerves in the Los Angeles area.

The quake, centered in Orange County near La Habra, was the second significant tremor in a very short period of time. Less than two weeks prior, a 4.4 quake with an epicenter in Westwood sent news anchors on
KTLA-TV scrambling for cover while live on the air. The mayor and emergency officials used the events, which thankfully caused no deaths or significant damage, to remind L.A. residents and visitors to be prepared.

“This [La Habra quake] is not a big earthquake, but it should cause everyone to take some actions,” Keith Knudsen, who studies earthquakes with the U.S. Geological Survey and is based out of Menlo Park, Calif, said. “Almost everybody has something more they can do … the fraction of people who have really prepared is pretty low.”

Let’s be honest: the chance of a major earthquake hitting during the three days of The Cable Show are not great (knock on wood). But it’s never a bad thing to know the protocols out of an abundance of caution.

California school children grow up knowing the basic tenets of “drop, cover and hold on.” Drop Cover Hold On (dropcoverholdon.com) is the URL for the Southern California Earthquake Center’s website. And if you remember anything in the event of a quake, let it be that.

Grabbing on to a desk in an office building or hotel room furniture until the shaking stops will help protect against falling debris, Knudsen said.

“The most frequent injury in California is from falling objects or trying to run,” Dr. Lucy Jones, USGS seismologist and science adviser on seismic safety to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, recently
wrote in a Reddit chat on earthquakes.

In newer buildings, falling debris is a much bigger concern than collapse. Los Angeles-area codes started to require strong earthquake resistance infrastructure in the 1970s, according to Knudsen, while those built after 1997 were required to meet the safest code requirements yet.

Local cable operators also have emergency plans, knowing that any disruption in service during a disaster would not only be a nuisance but could also potentially deprive the public of vital information.

“We’ve got programs in place, as do other MSOs and other companies similar to ours,” Time Warner Cable director of enterprise business continuity and crisis management Joe Viens said. 

Forecasting earthquakes is a famously inexact science, but most geologists agree the chance of a significant quake in the next 30 years somewhere in California is very good.

The chance of an earthquake equaling the 1994 Northridge quake that claimed nearly 60 lives and registered a 6.7 on the Richter scale is close to 100% over the next 30 years, according to Knudsen. He says the chance of a 7.5 or bigger in Southern California is near 60%.

“We look at evidence of when the past earthquakes have occurred,” Knudsen said. “We’re well within the average time span when you’d have big earthquakes … No one would be surprised if the San Andreas produced a big earthquake in Southern California tomorrow.”

There is a precedent for a California earthquake coinciding with a national cable-industry event. On Jan. 16, 1994, celebrities, newsmakers and cable industry executives gathered at Los Angeles’s Pantages Theatre for the CableACE Awards.  Hours later, the city was rocked by the deadliest earthquake in five years.

“If I remember right, I think it was a black-tie event,” former Cablevision magazine editor Craig Leddy, now the founder of Interactive TV Works, recalled. “Cable was really trying to be glamorous.”

HBO took home 34 of 88 awards at the ceremony, according to the Los Angeles Times, including a win by The Larry Sanders Show for best comedy, beating out Beavis and Butt-head. The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom won best movie or miniseries.

After the show, people went back to their hotels or off to afterparties.

Leddy was already up at the Century Plaza hotel when the quake struck because he had an early flight back to New York.  “It sounded like a big rainstorm and then everything started shaking,” he said. For Leddy, who grew up in the Midwest and lived on the East Coast, this was unchartered territory. 

“I said, ‘Wow, if that’s only a tremor, I’m a real wimp,’ ” he recalled. “That thing scared the hell out of me.”

It wasn’t a tremor. The Northridge earthquake struck at 4:31 a.m. about 20 miles northwest of downtown L.A. on Jan. 17, 1994, registering 6.7 on the Richter scale. More than 60 people were killed and damage was caused up to 85 miles away.

“I already had my bags packed, so I got dressed and I did what I thought was the only logical thing to do, which was to clean out the mini-bar,” he said. He took snacks, candy bars and a few beers, “because you never know when beers are going to come in handy in a disaster.”

He saw electrical transformers blowing up in the distance. He walked out into a completely dark hallway and smelled gas. The hotel made an announcement that someone would be coming to escort guests out, but Leddy wasn’t waiting around. He and others started feeling their way down the stairwell.

In the lobby, a broken pipe was gushing water. Leddy passed out minibar snacks, some to people with only towels wrapped around their bodies.

A colleague waded through the water to get to a rental car and gave Leddy a lift to the airport.

“Of course, we land in New York and there’s a big snowstorm,” he said.

On Tuesday, from 2-4 p.m., Catherine Bell, star of Hallmark Channel’s popular Good Witch movie franchise, which is being developed into an original series slated to debut in early 2015, will meet and greet show attendees at booth 925 on Tuesday, April 29.

Wednesday, from 2-4 p.m., will be Hallmark Movie Channel’s chance to salute Hollywood by offering classic movie treats. The booth also features a high-definition photo booth, which allows show attendees to instantly tweet, post, or text their photos.

On Tuesday, there will be appearances by NFL on Fox and UFC on Fox stars Curt Menifee, Jay Glazer and Cleatus the NFL Robot on Fox from 2-4 p.m. at the Fox Sports Bar in booth 2019.

On Wednesday from 2-3 p.m., Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith, Megyn Kelly, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Fox News Channel’s and Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo will be present to meet and greet Cable Show attendees

Also on Wednesday, Fox Sports Live talent will be on board, as will Homer and Bart Simpson, from 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Jay Onrait, Dan O’Toole, Gary Payton and Cleatus the NFL on Fox Robot will be at the Fox Sports Bar in the booth 2:30-4 p.m.

At the booth, visitors can demo TV Everywhere products from Fox Sports Media Group, Fox, FX Networks, Big Ten Network and National Geographic Channels, via FOXNOW, FXNOW, Nat Geo TV, Fox Sports Go and BTN2Go.

Showtime stars will be doing signings at the premium network’s 1513 booth on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Nurse Jackie star Peter Facinelli will be in attendance from 4-5 p.m. and on Wednesday House of Lies actors Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson will be there from 3-4 p.m.

This item was corrected on April 29. Incorrect scheduling information appears in today's Cable Show Daily.

Cable Show: CNN Serves Brunch, TNT Happy Hour

On Tuesday, the CNN brunch is from 12-2 p.m. Take a time-out from walking the show floor to enjoy brunch with CNN, and pick up a CNN branded travel mug at booth 1821.

TNT Happy Hour is from 3-5 p.m. Come by for afternoon beverages and pick up some giveaways from TNT’s upcoming original series The Last Ship.

On Wednesday, from 1-3 p.m., Cartoon Network characters Scooby-Doo, Regular Show’s Mordecai and Rigby and Jake and Finn from Adventure Time will be at the booth. And from 3:30-5:30 p.m., come celebrate TCM’s 20th anniversary with a Champagne toast and t-shirt giveaways.

Each day of the convention, during booth hours, the CNNx Digital Lounge will be open. Stop by to demo CNN’s newest digital product CNNx -- an innovative, next generation product that redefines how users consume news. Available via the CNN App for iPad to customers of select TV providers today, it will be offered to all TV subscribers later this year. Additionally, Watch CNNx will debut on set-top boxes and CNN.com by the end of 2014.

Targeting both legacy and new, IP-capable cable devices, Zodiac Interactive has launched a unified set-top software stack that will essentially try to do it all.

The company’s PowerUP Video Broadcast Solution (PVBS) is a hybrid QAM/IP software platform that supports the legacy tru2way platform, including boxes from both Cisco Systems and Arris, as well as next-gen HTML5-based ecosystems, and the Reference Design Kit, the preintegrated software platform being managed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global.

The all-inclusive stack starts with a new component that handles key middleware services, presentation engines, and drills down to the operating and business support systems, Brandon Brown, Zodiac’s CEO, said. Depending on their deployment requirements, operators, he said, can use all components of PVBS, or just a subset.

In the U.S. Zodiac’s known cable operator customers include Cablevision Systems and Charter Communications. On Monday, Charter noted that it’s using Zodiac’s software in a system that will underpin a cloud-based user interface that is capable of running on legacy  QAM-only boxes as well as a new breed of IP-capable set-tops and gateways.

Zodiac said it’s working with Charter toward interoperability on new managed devices, and more than 40 models of legacy managed devices. 

Zodiac’s stack, Brown said, can also enable MSOs to support apps and services on unmanaged devices that consumers purchase at retail.

If cable operators are eager to keep the budding cord-cutting trend in check, they’d be well served to offer an integrated, aggregated one-stop-shop that combines traditional TV services with fare delivered over-the-top, according to a new study from Amdocs.

About 76% of purported cord-cutters or consumers who had reduced the size of their video subscription – sometimes referred to as “cord-shaving” -- said they would reconsider if they were offered a service that aggregates all video content, according to a survey of  750 consumers in North America commissioned by the customer care and billing specialist.

Roughly 66% of all respondents said they would prefer this TV/OTT mix, while 40% said they would pay more for that kind of combination, Amdocs found.

Although cable operators have fared poorly in recent consumer studies, Amdocs said its survey found that MSOs outperformed OTT players in terms of customer service (92%), content (89%), and video quality (83%).

Consumers surveyed also cited content (39%) as their biggest complaint about OTT video providers, followed by customer service (22%). They’ll also pay a 10% premium for a better experience in areas of content (62%), multi-screen provisioning (44%), user interface (30%), and customer service (25%).

The “ideal” pay TV provider would offer additional services such as video gaming (23%), social media (21%), music (18%), and user-generated content (17%).

“The survey shows that in this challenging time for the pay TV market, including competition from OTT players leading to cord cutting and cord shaving and the need to deliver a next-generation experience, MSOs have some clear strengths that can be leveraged both in terms of customer experience and the actual viewing experience,” Nizar Assanie, VP of IE Market Research Corp, the company that conducted the survey, said in a statement. “People are looking towards their MSOs to be the single source of their video and entertainment consumption.”

Operators are taking heed of such advice. Among recent examples, three cable operators – RCN, Grande Communications and Atlantic Broadband  -- recently notched deals with Netflix that enable them to offer the streaming service on leased TiVo-powered devices.

Comcast, meanwhile, is starting to weave in some Internet-based apps with X1, its next-gen, IP-capable video platform. Following initial integrations of Pandora, Facebook, Instagram and the NBC Sports Live Extra app (during the Sochi Games) on X1, Comcast is also testing Movie Night, a movie-picking game that ties in a Web browser-based app with the MSO’s video-on-demand service.

Taking a big step into the world of the kind of more automated, data-driven ad scheduling seen in the online video world, Visible World and Suddenlink have announced a partnership to apply so-called “programmatic” scheduling to the MSO’s cross-channel advertising inventory.

Using Visible World’s platform, which uses real-time data to monitor and value ad units on an impression basis, Suddenlink will evaluate how well certain programs reach certain audiences, and automatically allocate ads within its linear TV schedule to ensure that the ads are most effective, the companies said.

“Getting the right spots in the right programs and dayparts was previously a very manual process. The new tool now makes that process much easier, more efficient and ultimately more effective, Jerry Dow, chief marketing officer of Suddenlink Communications, said in a statement.

In addition to enabling pacing adjustments to ensure that ad goals are met without over- or under-delivering on ad contracts, a key aim of the project is to “bridge the gap” between advertising operations and marketing sciences, Visible World CEO Seth Haberman said, in an interview.

The resulting scheduler optimizer product will allow Suddenlink to finesse its ad trafficking system with respect to placement, “but with a marketing mind” that can help to determine the right audience for the message, and how frequently it needs to be delivered, Haberman added.

Suddenlink has already deployed Visible World’s programmatic system across its full footprint, covering “well over a million households,” according to the Visible World exec.

Haberman noted that Visible World is testing its programmatic system for linear video advertising with another cable operator, and expects to have two multichannel video programming distributors go live with it by the end of the year.

Maggie McLean Suniewick serves as senior vice president, strategic integration, responsible for spearheading key Symphony cross-marketing initiatives across NBCUniversal’s entire portfolio and within Comcast Corp. Suniewick is being honored by the NCTA with year’s Vanguard Award for Young Leadership, which recognizes younger cable executives who have already made a mark on the industry and its constituents.

In her role, Suniewick is charged with identifying creative, technological and strategic opportunities between Comcast and NBCUniversal’s portfolio, which includes broadcast networks NBC and Telemundo, 17 cable networks and more than 50 digital properties, a motion picture studio, television production operations, a leading television stations group and numerous theme parks.

Symphony, Comcast’s strategic company-wide marketing initiative, promotes upcoming NBCUniversal programming, movies and events, including the Olympics, and Comcast’s products and services across the portfolio to drive awareness and help connect with consumers. In addition, Symphony projects include major strategic initiatives like TV Everywhere.

Before she took on her current position, Suniewick served as vice president of programming for Comcast Cable from 2010 to 2013, overseeing editorial and programming across all video platforms and consumer products, including Xfinity On Demand, XfinityTV.com and the Xfinity TV Player app.

Suniewick also oversaw the company’s TV Everywhere initiatives including NBC Sports Live Extra, HBO Go and WatchESPN. From 2006 to 2010, Suniewick served as vice president, strategy and development for Comcast Interactive Media, where she focused on the online distribution of content, both negotiating deals with major content providers and launching content across Xfinity products.

Prior joining Comcast in 2006, Suniewick spent seven years with Oxygen Media where, as one of the company’s first employees, she helped to launch the network in February of 2000. During her tenure there, she served many roles, including as the editor and producer of Oxygen’s personal-finance website and as manager of finance and planning for the company.

Suniewick is a graduate of Wesleyan University and received her MBA from Columbia University.

Fun Fact:

Suniewick was responsible for Comcast’s “Xfinity TV Watchathon” in 2012, during which time Comcast offered a massive collection of content never before available for free in one place. The event broke all prior records on the platforms and logged double-digit-percentage viewership increases over the course of the week-long campaign.

As president of Showtime Networks, David Nevins is responsible for developing, acquiring and supervising all aspects of programming for all of the premium programmer’s channels across all genres, including comedy, drama, reality, specials, documentaries and films.

Nevins also manages Showtime Sports, as well as the company’s marketing, creative, digital media, scheduling, research, acquisitions, home entertainment, business affairs and corporate communications teams. He also serves as the liaison to parent CBS Corp.’s international and domestic distribution groups.

Nevins this year is being honored with the NCTA’s Vanguard Award for programmers. He’s being recognized for his innovation, leadership and individual achievement in the home entertainment, news and information business.

Under his tenure, Showtime has launched eight consecutive hit series, including Ray Donovan, Masters of Sex, Homeland, Shameless and House of Lies — all of which are among the network’s top-rated shows. Homeland, the first Showtime project green-lighted by Nevins, was the recipient of Golden Globe and Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series, as well as a prestigious Peabody Award.

Nevins has been a formidable figure in television for years. Before joining Showtime, he was an Emmy Award-winning producer and veteran network and studio programming executive. He served as president of Imagine Television from July 2002 until June 2010, where he oversaw development, production and acted as executive producer on all Imagine Television shows. Under his leadership, Imagine produced a pair of Emmy Award-winning series: Arrested Development, which won for Outstanding Comedy Series, and 24, which won for Outstanding Drama Series. He also developed and executive-produced Lie to Me, Parenthood, Shark and Friday Night Lights, which received honors from the American Film Institute (AFI) for Television Program of the Year and won a Peabody Award. Nevins was nominated for an Emmy Award as an executive producer for the series’ final season.

Prior to his gig at Imagine, Nevins served as executive vice president, programming, at Fox Broadcasting, where he oversaw all development and current programming for both comedy and drama series. During his three-year tenure, he developed the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning drama 24, and was also responsible for the development of The Bernie Mac Show, Andy Richter Controls the Universe and Boston Public. Nevins also served as senior vice president, primetime series at NBC, where he was responsible for the development and ongoing creative supervision of such renowned dramas and comedies as ER, The West Wing, Will & Grace, Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: SVU.

With all that TV experience, Nevins isn’t entirely sold on the concept of limited series. He told attendees of the annual Television Critics Tour in January that while he sees the return of the miniseries as “an interesting trend,” he still thinks the “best thing for us is to get shows that we can really get people in love with then bring them back a year from now. I believe fundamentally in renewable resources.”

Nevins graduated from Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., with a bachelor of arts degree. He and his wife, Andrea, live in Los Angeles with their daughter, Clara, and two sons, Charlie and Jesse.

Fun Fact:

Since his arrival four years ago, Showtime has added 5 million subscribers, garnered 99 Emmy nominations and 22 wins, and 29 Golden Globe nods and wins.

As president and CEO of Comcast Cable and executive vice president of Comcast Corp., Neil Smit is responsible for all business aspects of the company’s cable operations.

Smit joined Comcast in March 2010 from Charter Communications, where he had served as CEO and director since 2005. He is well-known for his technical prowess and currently serves as the chairman of CableLabs, the research and development consortium for the cable industry. During the past two years, Comcast has launched more than 40 new products.

Under Smit’s watch, Comcast reduced basic video subscriber losses for more than two years straight — and, in the fourth quarter, reported its first basic-video gain in more than six years. It has also reported industry-leading gains in high-speed-data customer additions and has consistently outperformed the industry in revenue and cash flow growth. Under his tutelage, Comcast has introduced new products every quarter, launched iPad apps and TV Everywhere, beefed up its video-on-demand library, launched a subscription-based VOD multiscreen service called Streampix and introduced its cloud-based user interface, the X1.

Prior to joining Charter, Smit was the president of Time Warner’s America Online Access Business, where he oversaw Internet access services, including America Online (AOL), CompuServe and Netscape. He also served at AOL as executive vice president, member services, and chief operating officer of MapQuest. Smit also served as a regional president with Nabisco and held a number of management positions at Pillsbury.

After being discharged from the Navy, Smit attended Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts, where he earned a master’s degree with a focus on international business. He didn’t exactly know what he wanted to do at that point but when he was scanning a list of Fletcher alumni, he noticed one had a crisis-management consulting business. Figuring that might correlate well with his Navy SEALS experience, he decided to check it out.

“Their primary business was kidnapping negotiations,” Smit told St. Louis Commerce Magazine in 2008 when the magazine interviewed him during his days at Charter. “You know, as a Navy SEAL when you parachute into a situation, you’ve got to figure it out pretty fast. This was no different. I had to make a quick assessment of a situation, plan action and communicate it to everyone involved.”

Eventually, Smit moved on to the food business with Nabisco and Pillsbury, where he held a number of executive positions. He credits his Navy SEAL training for giving him one of the most important lessons in leadership.

“The first thing you learn in SEAL team training is, it’s all about the team; it’s not about the individual,” Smit told Broadcasting & Cable when he was inducted into B&C’s Hall of Fame in 2013. “You learn that you play to win, there’s no alternative. You make decisions in the situation. You make a call, you go left or you go right, you can adjust later, but get out of the line of fire. You’ve always got to be developing your skills and your team capabilities. You’ve got to be better.”

In addition to his roles at Comcast and CableLabs, Smit is chairman of the NCTA’s board of directors and serves on the board of directors for C-SPAN and on the executive committee of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s board of trustees. He is also a member of the board of visitors for Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

He resides in Philadelphia with his wife and sons.

Fun Fact:

For five and a half years, Smit served on active duty with the Navy SEAL Teams and retired from the service as a Lieutenant Commander.

John Pascarelli has 33 years of cable-industry experience and has served as Mediacom Communications’ executive vice president, operations since November of 2003.

The NCTA this year is honoring Pascarelli with its Vanguard Award for Cable Operations Management, which recognizes the efforts of cable’s system managers, who work under intensely competitive conditions in today’s dynamic telecommunications environment and are critical to the cable industry’s success at the local level.

“When I started out as a door-to-door sales representative with Continental Cablevision, we were just introducing cable-TV service to communities in Eastern Massachusetts,” Pascarelli said. “Our only product was video and it consisted of a 25-channel basic lineup and HBO, Cinemax and Showtime as premium movie services.”

Fast-forward to today, and Mediacom has a dynamic fiber network spanning 22 states and nearly going coast-to-coast. The company provides a full suite of interactive residential services, including HD video, broadband Internet, voice, and home automation. But Pascarelli believes the best is yet to come.

Prior to taking on his current job, Pascarelli was senior vice president, marketing and consumer services and vice president of marketing. Before joining Mediacom, Pascarelli served as vice president, marketing for Helicon Communications from January 1996 to February 1998. He has worked at CableVision Industries, Continental Cablevision, Cablevision Systems and Storer Communications. He became a Cable Pioneer in 2008 and was recently elected to the board of directors. He serves on the board for Catholic Charities Community Services of Orange County, N.Y.

Pascarelli said video affordability is the most signifi cant issue the industry faces today and said he doesn’t see anything that will “stop the relentless rise in programming costs for video distributors and their customers … I fear that one day we will reach the tipping point where the average American household will simply say they cannot afford the basic-video package.”

Still, he remains bullish on cable and sees upside potential in commercial services and more broadband offerings. He’s also excited about the potential of such new areas as home automation.

Fun Fact:

Pascarelli first worked with Mediacom Communications CEO Rocco Commisso when the two executives worked at Cablevision Industries Inc. in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

DeDe Lea was named executive vice president, global government relations of Viacom in January 2006. She is responsible for setting public-policy strategy for the media firm and leads the company’s worldwide government-relations team. Based in Washington, D.C., Lea reports directly to Viacom president and CEO Philippe Dauman.

Lea is being honored this year with the Vanguard Award for government and community relations. This award recognizes individuals who have had a significant impact on promoting a positive public image and advocating public policy positions for the cable industry at the national, state and/or local levels.

Lea is responsible for the government-relations activities of MTV Networks (MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, CMT, Spike TV and TV Land). She has held several senior government-relations roles at the company between 1997 and 2004 and again from 2005 to 2006. She served as VP of government relations at Belo Corp. from 2004 to 2005.

Before joining Viacom, Lea held a variety of positions with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), beginning as a legal intern in 1991 and ultimately serving as senior vice president of government relations. Prior to joining the NAB, Lea held sales and account executive positions with television and radio stations in Washington, D.C., including WTTG-TV and WDJY and WRQX radio.

Lea played a pivotal role in pushing for the 1992 Cable Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act rewrite. She also pursued strong piracy protections for TV programmers and helped block various lawmakers’ efforts to auction digital spectrum and impost content regulation on broadcasters.

She received a law degree from Georgetown University in 1993 and graduated cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in broadcast management from Howard University in 1985.

Lea lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, a physician, and her sons, ages 7 and 9.

Fun Fact:

When the Beatles Rock Band video game, developed by Harmonix and distributed by MTV Games, came out in 2009, Lea got on stage during a launch party in Washington, D.C., with other media players and politicos to celebrate and rock the house with Beatles tunes.

Patty McCaskill joined the Suddenlink Communications team in February 2003. Today, she is responsible for managing all of the MSO’s content relationships with media ownership groups, television stations and cable networks.

After almost 35 years, McCaskill is set to retire later this year with an impressive list of accomplishments in cable-industry management and operations, with an emphasis in programming, marketing, sales, customer service, strategic planning and budget development. She is being honored by the NCTA this year with the organization’s Vanguard Award for Distinguished Leadership.

Upon the announcement of her retirement earlier this year, Suddenlink CEO Jerry Kent said: “I’ve worked with Patty for more than 20 years, through a period of tremendous change in the industry. During that time, she never ceased to impress me with her boundless energy, talent and creativity. All of us at Suddenlink wish her the very best.”

Known for being tenacious (she doesn’t take “no” for an answer, Kent told Multichannel News in 2009, when she was named one of the magazine’s Wonder Women) and fair, McCaskill has spent most of her time in recent years renewing programming deals to include the transmission of programming via various new and emerging delivery mechanisms.

Before she joined Suddenlink, McCaskill was vice president, programming and pay-per-view for Charter Communications, where she worked from 1993 until early 2003. Prior to Charter, McCaskill was the founder and president of McCaskill Communications Consultants. From 1987 to 1992, she served as vice president, central region for the Travel Channel.

Earlier in her career, she was advertising product manager for Southwestern Bell Publications and vice president of sales and marketing for Warner Amex/QUBE in St. Louis.

A member of the Cable Pioneers class of 2002, McCaskill founded and served as a past president of the St. Louis Chapter of Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) and is a past member of the WICT National Board. She is also a member of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Advanced Cable Solutions Consortium and has served on the CTAM Summit planning committee and co-chaired the 2003 CTAM Digital Conference.

In addition, McCaskill is a National Cable Television Cooperative board member; serves as a trustee and member of the executive committee of the board of Maryville University; and is a past member of the board of governors of the St. Louis/Mid-America chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

McCaskill holds a bachelor’s degree from Maryville University.

Fun Fact:

While most cable executives have had to pick up stakes and move around the country to enhance and further their careers, McCaskill managed to become one of the industry’s most successful and effective cable executives in the industry without ever leaving St. Louis, Mo.

As executive vice president and chief operating officer for Time Warner Cable Business Services, Philip Meeks oversees all aspects of operations, sales and marketing for the company’s rapidly growing business-services unit, which serves more than 600,000 business customers and accounts for more than $2 billion in annual revenue.

Meeks leads a team of more than 6,000 employees and oversees all aspects of operations, sales and marketing for business services. He is being awarded the NCTA’s Vanguard Award for Cable Operations Management, which recognizes the efforts of cable’s system managers, who work under intensely competitive conditions in today’s dynamic telecommunications environment and are critical to the cable industry’s success at the local level.

Until June 2013, Meeks had served as senior vice president of Cox Business, where he led 3,500 employees, making it the fastest-growing business unit in the MSO. Before joining Cox in 2008, he was the co-founder and lead executive for a startup company focused on enhancing the supply chain between technology vendors and value-added resellers in the Internet security, data-storage and voice-over-Internet-protocol markets.

During his 20 years at MCI Telecommunications, Meeks served in various strategy, sales and accountmanagement roles, including senior VP of sales operations and senior VP of strategic ventures and alliances. He started his career at AT&T Information Systems/Southern Bell in 1979 and progressed through various leadership roles in sales and marketing.

Under the guidance of Meeks and his team, Time Warner Cable has crafted a plan to take the company’s business-services revenues from their current $2-plus billion to more than $5 billion within four or fi ve years. That fact makes the folks at Comcast happy, in light of the proposed merger between TWC and the No. 1 U.S. MSO.

Both companies have been growing their business services units and both serve predominantly small- and midsized businesses. But the combination of the two cable providers, coupled with Time Warner Cable’s strategy of offering dedicated bandwidth for voice calls, should be better positioned to go after larger companies.

Meeks graduated from the University of Georgia, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and journalism. He also completed executive education programs at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Virginia.

Fun Fact:

Meeks hit the ground running at Time Warner Cable, reorganizing the company’s business unit within the first 90 days on the job. A month later, TWC ponied up $600 million to buy DukeNet, a firm that delivers a range of commercial-class services and operates an optical fiber network that stretches 8,700 miles.

Yvette Kanouff serves as executive vice president, corporate engineering & technology at Cablevision Systems. She is responsible for implementing the company’s strategic technology and critical engineering objectives, as well as identifying emerging technology opportunities.

Kanouff also oversees the development and integration of new products for the company, from conceptualization to implementation as well as the integration, testing and deployment of the company’s internal IT systems. She also plays an active role in developing and leveraging technologies through third-party business relationships or acquisitions.

Kanouff also established the authentication that enables Optimum TV customers to access nearly 50 TV to Go offerings included in their subscription using a supported desktop, laptop or mobile device. Cablevision won a technology and engineering Emmy last year for its cloudbased DVR product. In addition to product improvements, Kanouff spearheaded significant advanced monitoring projects that make it possible to detect the vast majority of technical issues before they affect customers. As a result, Cablevision has signifi cantly reduced customer-service calls and truck rolls.

The NCTA this year will honor Kanouff with its Vanguard Award for Science & Technology, given to individuals who have played a significant role in product improvement, as well as in the design and development of engineering techniques.

Before joining Cablevision, Kanouff served as president of SeaChange International, an on-demand software/product company, spearheading its transition from a hardware manufacturer to a software firm while helping to move the industry towards Web-centric, open-standardsbased solutions and architectures. As chief strategy officer at SeaChange, she established the company’s software division and expanded its leadership position in the videoon- demand arena.

Prior to joining SeaChange in 1997, Kanouff served as Time Warner Cable’s director of interactive technologies, responsible for managing technical departments including system integration, software quality, advanced network technologies, and system software for the world’s first digital interactive television and video-on-demand launch.

Kanouff has received many industry awards and acknowledgements throughout her career. Broadcasting & Cable has named her one of the 11 most influential women in the television industry and Multichannel News honored her as a Wonder Woman in 2001. She has also been awarded the Woman in Technology honor from the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and Women in Cable and Telecommunications.

In addition to her duties at Cablevision, Kanouff is an executive member of WICT, a senior member of the SCTE and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and holds a master’s of science degree in mathematics.

Fun Fact:

Kanouff has won an Emmy Award for her work on video-on-demand with SeaChange and holds several patents on VOD-related digital technologies.

As president and CEO of Women in Cable Telecommunications, Maria Brennan has worked collaboratively with executives and companies to develop women leaders in the cable industry.

As the oldest and largest organization serving women professionals in cable telecommunications, WICT has remained steadfast in its resolve to advance women and position them in local and national leadership roles. For her part, Brennan has successfully expanded the organization’s programs and its reach.

NCTA is honoring Brennan with its Vanguard Award for Associates & Affiliates, which recognizes the important contributions of service suppliers and equipment manufacturers to the cable industry’s innovation and progress.

Since she joined WICT in 2009, Brennan and her team have managed to increase the organization’s membership numbers each year. She also took the group overseas with its first-ever event in the United Kingdom, and relaunched WICT’s Senior Executive Summit for high-level women in cable.

Before joining WICT, Brennan served as president of American Women in Radio and Television for nine years. She has worked with a number of diversity-based non-profit groups, including the National Association of Women Business Owners and The International Alliance of Women.

Brennan has more than 23 years of executive management experience with associations ranging from 2,000 to 33,000 members in size, with particular expertise in the areas of strategic planning, communications, resource development and advocacy.

Brennan is often cable’s public voice on genderdiversity matters and is often quoted as an expert on pay equity and work/life integration issues. She received an EXCEL Award for her “Hear Me Roar” column in the American Women in Radio and Television’s national magazine, Making Waves.

She was elected to serve on the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard University in 2007, and is a member of its strategic planning and communications subcommittees. Brennan is also a coalition member of WIPP — Women Impacting Public Policy, a commissioner of the Girl Scouts Healthy Media Council and a charter member of the FCC’s Diversity Advisory Board, where she is currently serving her fifth term. She teaches continuing education classes in the non-profi t sector, where she has served as an American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) Certifi ed Association Executive immersion instructor.

She is a native of Washington, D.C., where she and her husband Michael reside with their two daughters.

Fun Fact:

Brennan received her CAE (Certified Association Executive) distinction from the American Society of Association Executives; a certification earned by only 5% of non-profit executives in the United States.

Coleman Breland serves as president of Turner Network Sales (TNS), the domestic distribution, sales and marketing arm of Turner Broadcasting System, overseeing affiliate sales, marketing promotion, interactive television and new technology business development for the company’s news and entertainment networks.

He also supervises sales and negotiations for Turner’s 10 domestic basic-cable networks, including CNN, TNT, TBS and Cartoon Network, as well as the partnerships developed by Turner Private Networks and the Business Development group. Breland manages the affiliate marketing and affiliate ad-sales groups, and works with affiliate partners to further align their business partnerships.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association this year is honoring Breland with its Vanguard Award for Marketing, which spotlights an individual who has been instrumental in the development of marketing approaches that significantly enhance cable’s public image and increase customers.

Breland is based in Atlanta and reports to David Levy, Turner’s president. He was most recently chief operating officer for TNS, a role he assumed in 2009 after serving as executive vice president of sales and marketing for Turner’s distribution unit since 2003. He joined the division as senior vice president of marketing and sales. Prior to joining Turner, Breland served as director of marketing and communications for Arthur Andersen/Andersen Consulting in Atlanta for more than six years.

Breland has steadily climbed the corporate ladder at Turner but it wasn’t easy getting in the door. Once he decided he wanted to work for the programmer, he applied for almost every open position and was rejected 11 times before he was hired in 1994 as vice president of marketing for Turner Home Satellite, according to Broadcasting & Cable.

Breland has a lot on his plate at Turner, but he’s also active outside the office. He currently serves on the board of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, the Board of Advisers for the Center for Ethics at Emory University, and the board of the Covenant House of Georgia. He is also a member of the CTAM Educational Foundation Board of Directors and of the Rotary Club of Atlanta. He has previously served on the board of directors for Zoo Atlanta, as the chair for the organization’s marketing committee from 2003 to 2008. He also served on the board of CTAM from 2002 to 2005, and served on the board of Prevent Child Abuse Georgia (formerly Georgia Council on Child Abuse) from 1996 to 2002.

Breland also served on the board of the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association for five years. He holds a master’s degree in journalism, radio, television and film from the University of Georgia and a bachelor’s degree in English from Pfeiffer College in North Carolina. In addition, he completed a graduate study program at Edinburgh University in Scotland.

Fun Fact:

Breland’s first job was writing for the Dean Rusk Center for International Law. Then, he worked for Southern Satellite Systems, selling time on the vertical blanking interval on TBS, which was used to transmit data at the then-breakneck rate of 2,400 baud.