Tom Rogers, the former NBCU Cable head and ex-CEO of TiVo is now executive chairman of Engine Media, which was listed on the Nasdaq market Thursday with the ticker symbol GAME, finishing at $10.46 a share, down 15.7%.

Engine Media was formed by the merger of three companies during the pandemic. It now consists of three gaming companies and three media solutions companies. With its listing, it can continue to grow by acquisitions. But Rogers doesn’t see buying any traditional media companies.

“We see ourselves as being an ally to traditional media companies that need to think about rejiggering their model toward direct-to-consumer fees,” Rogers told Broadcasting+Cable. “But directly acquiring traditional media properties? No.”

Rogers sees sports as a genre being hit hard by pay TV’s decline in viewing and subscribers fees, forcing media companies to find a new business model.

Most media companies are exploring gambling, but gambling is only one slice of the sports business.

“Gambling is an answer, but it will never be the only answer,” Rogers said. “It is fans that really drive sports and one of Engine’s businesses produces and customizes games meant to take advantage of the social and competitive nature of sports fans." 

Engine is also into eSports, which attracts younger viewers. “For younger demographics, sports is eSports," he said. It also has a company that measures eSports and the people who play them.

“The real opportunity is to figure out how to get that enthusiastic fan base to pay for an enhanced experience when watching sports on television,” he said. 

Rogers said Engine has begun contacting media companies about working with them. “We will certainly be having those conversations. We’ve certainly begun to have some recently,” he said. 

Engine's media services company includes companies in two fast-growing areas: programmatic advertising and measuring influencer marketing. On Wednesday it agreed to acquire Sideqik, an influencer marketing platform that offers brands, direct marketers, and agencies tools to discover, connect and execute marketing campaigns with content-creating influencers. Engine will integrate its Stream Hatchet unit with Sideqik, creating a one-stop-show for audience measurement, media value assessment and brand connection to gamers and influencers.

Another priority is managing Engine’s patent portfolio, Rogers said.

“We’re very much focused on building the businesses we have and making sure that all the clients that we look to serve are taking full advantage of the existing businesses,” he said, adding that Engine will be “opportunistic if we can find other pieces that fit within this rubric.”

During his days at NBCU Cable, Rogers worked closely with David Zaslav, now CEO of Discovery, which is poised to become Warner Bros. Discovery.

Rogers said they still talk. “He’s got his hands full,” he said. As a long-time observer of of the TV business, Rogers said he’s not surprised AT&T threw in the towel after spending hundreds of billion on media properties.

“When they looked around and saw their options, I think David represents a great one,” Rogers said. "He’s really transformed Discovery from a true underdog to a powerhouse. So if you’re going to make a bet on who can take their linear assets and really do something with them, he’s a good guy.”

WinView, a startup behind a free mobile app that lets users win cash prizes by making situational predictions during live TV sporting events, has expanded into Major League Baseball.

WinView’s new baseball game, offered on its app for iOS and Android mobile devices, now synchs up with each at-bat from live, regular season  national and regional televised games.

WinView noted that its ad-supported platform lets users enter 20-person, one-inning competitions for free, which pays out cash prizes to the top scorers each inning, and supports two types of live  -- stat-driven Safe or Out predictions for the outcome of an at-bat, and situational Yes or No predictions created and delivered in real time by WinView producers. Users can also make a “Clutch Pick” for a chance to double their points with a correct prediction.

RELATED: Betting on the Future of Enhanced TV (subscription required)

At the end of each one-inning contest, winners are rewarded with WinCoins that can be accumulated and redeemed for cash prizes.

WinView recently landed a $12 million “B” round from a group that includes Graham Holdings, Discovery Communications, LionTree Partners, and Ted Leonsis’ Monumental Sports & Entertainment.

RELATED: Discovery Invests in WinView

Tom Rogers, the former chairman and CEO of TiVo, is executive chairman of WinView. He’s on tap to keynote the Next TV Summit on June 15 in New York City in a session moderated by Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV editorial director Mark Robichaux.

“The changing face of television consumption in the U.S. has made both televised sports and sports leagues realize they need to find new ways to engage the viewer with a deeper, more fun experience,” Rogers said in a statement. “Our immersive live sports prediction platform provides the ideal vehicle, especially when considering the enormous success of two-screen sports in Europe.”

Anyone who has spent any time in the TV business has heard the mantra before: This year is advanced advertising’s year. But unlike the past two decades, in which many a promising ad-tech initiative has stumbled, cable and broadcast executives may finally have the incentive to make targeted ads reality.

For advanced advertising — using the torrent of data from set-top boxes, digital and mobile devices to target messages to specific households and individuals — the erosion of the traditional TV model could be the force that frees the technology. As viewing habits have shifted away from linear TV, distributors, networks and advertisers themselves all have a vested interest in reaching that elusive market.

“When models reach the breaking point, that’s when breakouts happen,” Tom Rogers, chairman of TRget Media LLC and the former TiVo CEO, said in an interview. “It’s been clear for some time that the traditional linear TV model has had its challenges. We’re really beginning to see some things happen that are very, very significant accelerations.”

And networks, distributors and ad buyers alike are buying in, with distributors like Comcast and Altice USA snapping up small ad-tech companies, networks forming consortiums like OpenAP to identify opportunities and set standards, and even, in the case of NBCUniversal, devoting a growing piece of their ad budgets to targeting.

Related: The Future of Television Is Now

In March, NBCU said it would offer about $1 billion in inventory to targeted ads this year. And at the recent upfronts, NBCU chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships Linda Yaccarino slammed the questionable reach of some digital ads.

“Has a ‘view’ ever bought any of your products?” Yaccarino asked at NBCU’s May 15 upfront event. “Has a ‘like’ ever walked into a store? … Viewers buy products.”

Related: Data Drives Some Talk at Upfront Presentations [subscription required]

First-Quarter Slippage
Exacerbating the need for more focused ads is the mounting evidence that cord-cutting, cord-shaving and skinny programming bundles are gaining steam. In the first quarter, the pay TV distribution market fell by 762,000 subscribers, the single largest first-quarter decline ever, according to MoffettNathanson. And once indestructible brands, like The Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, have seen their subscriber bases shrink as viewers move to other venues and devices to fill their content needs.

ESPN has lost between 12 million and 13 million subscribers from its peak and plans to launch a direct-to-consumer service targeted at younger viewers later this year. At the same time, ratings stalwart the National Football League saw its ratings fall 9% last year (double that for the coveted 18-24 year old demographic), while other sports are getting older. Meanwhile, younger viewers are staying away from the living room TV set.

According to TechCrunch, viewers are watching 1 billion hours of YouTube video clips per day.

Related: OTT Players Poised to Win TV’s Future [subscription required]

Traditional distributors and programmers are taking notice. Comcast has purchased several ad-tech companies over the past few years, including FreeWheel, StickyAds.tv and Visible World. Altice USA bought advanced ad company Audience Partners in March, and in April programmers Viacom, Turner and 21st Century Fox formed consortium OpenAP to standardize the way targeted audiences are defined and measured.

The TV industry still has some time before the ad model completely disintegrates, Pivotal Research Group senior analyst Brian Weiser said.

“To me, it’s evolutionary, not revolutionary,” Wieser said. “Ratings can fall by double digits, yet traditional TV is a source of premium video content with adjacent advertising opportunities. It continues to dwarf everything else.”

Industry group the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) pegged digital video ad revenue at about $9.1 billion in 2016, compared with $69 billion for TV ads.

Wieser said a dramatic shift in viewers could sway the market, but it would have to be very dramatic.

“For TV to find itself in a position where advertisers would all of a sudden make radical changes, you would have to find a good core of the audience evaporate,” Wieser said. “And by evaporate I mean reach goes away.”

The emergence of groups like OpenAP are more a means to show the industry that programmers are not out of step with the times, Weiser said, adding that perception is a bigger force of change in the ad market than reality.

“Decisions end up getting made based on the perception of how things are going, and fear,” Wieser said. He pointed to the TV ad market in 2015, which to some was the indicator that the traditional TV ad model had broken, but was, Wieser said, merely a bad year made to look worse by unfavorable comparables to the prior year. In 2016, when heavy ad spending by such daily fantasy sports sites as FanDuel and DraftKings spurred the TV market, the problem appeared to be solved. Now in 2017, the ad market is in decline again.

“What’s happening now is what people feared would happen a couple of years ago,” Wieser said. “Cost constraints are more pronounced than they have ever been. Now we’re at a place where I’m feeling doubtful that national TV will grow again. But it’s not because of digital, per se.”

At TVSquared, an ad-tech company that tracks brand traffic and helps advertisers choose how to target their messages, chief technology officer Kevin O’Reilly agreed fears the TV ad model is dead are overblown.

O’Reilly said the TV apocalypse has been coming for the past 15 years, and this wave is being fueled by the emergence of the second screen.

“If the apocalypse is coming, it’s coming slowly,” he said. But he added that ad buyers and sellers are realizing that both traditional and advanced models can coexist.

“Advertisers are saying, look, I know linear TV works, it really does drive efficient traffic. And one of the big benefits of efficiency is if I can find a way to be slightly more efficient in an efficient marketplace, I’m going to make money,” O’Reilly said. “There is major value in still reaching a very large audience, I just want to make sure I’m reaching the right part of that audience. And when I’m not reaching the right part of the audience, I can change my buy and optimize it into parts where I’m seeing it perform better.”

Getting to that point will probably take a round of consolidation in the business, Rogers said, creating one-stop shops for participants to access the expertise they need.

“The problem is, there are so many silos, so many companies, that it is a bit of a mess,” Rogers said, adding that there is an increasing need to put ad-tech solutions under a single roof. “Until that is solved, it’s going to be difficult for a massive breakthrough.”

The convergence of ad tech and distribution has been a long time coming with the inherent convergence of data-driven advertising and those who compile the data, said Waller Capital Partners managing director Roddy Moon, who leads the boutique investment bank’s digital media practice and who has covered the ad-tech sector since its early days.

Related: Waller Capital's Video Services Consolidation Chart

Helping to spur along that convergence is the dominance of digital behemoths Google and Facebook in the digital ad space. Morgan Stanley estimates that about 85 cents of every new online ad dollar goes to those two companies.

“There are still a tremendous number of companies chasing that remaining 15 cents,” Moon said. “But that’s just digital ad spend; the 800-pound gorilla is still TV ad budgets.”

To address that market, Moon said, the industry is beginning to realize it needs a common, integrated data-driven platform. With scores of small, medium and large ad-tech companies out there, many are realizing that creating a one-stop shop for distributors, content owners and advertisers can help the development along.

“It used to be that it was an ‘either-or’ mentality,” Moon said of the ad-tech business. “You were either digital or traditional television. Now there is more of a mindset from the marketing side that it should be holistic.”

Cable Jumps In, Too
At the same time, cable and telco distributors are trying to dispel the notion that others are taking over this emerging business. Comcast started buying ad-tech firms in 2005, with Strata Marketing, followed by Seattle-based thePlatform in 2006. In the past three years, Comcast has purchased video ad startup FreeWheel (2014), This Technology (2015), Visible World (2015) and StickyAds (2016), all with a view toward offering more targeted ad product.

Earlier this month, Comcast named Marcien Jenckes, a former ad-tech entrepreneur, as president of advertising. Jenckes has held several roles at Comcast since joining the company in 2010 — he was most recently executive vice president of consumer services at Comcast Cable, where he oversaw its video, internet, voice and Xfinity Home businesses.

The newest entry to the U.S. cable space — Altice USA, a unit of European telecom company Altice N.V. — has also dipped its toes in the ad-tech space. Altice USA purchased Suddenlink Communications in December 2015 for $9.1 billion and in June 2016 bought Cablevision Systems for $17.7 billion, making it the fourth largest cable operator in the country with 4.6 million residential and business services subscribers.

Cablevision had been a pioneer in taking a digital-like approach to advertising, Altice USA chief data officer Paul Haddad said. Haddad had served as senior vice president and general manager of advanced data and analytics at Cablevision, playing a key role in its advanced advertising strategy.

That expertise and experience now in demand in the business, Haddad said, and advertisers and networks, who may have given advanced ads short shrift in the past, are getting a lot more serious.

“We’re being asked to discuss our strategy with major players,” Haddad said. “In previous years, people were assessing the value proposition, versus today I can sense they want to test, they want to discuss business plans. To us, this is the real sign that, yes, we think it’s going to start gaining major traction starting this year. In 18 to 24 months I could see it becoming a standard request when it comes to advertising in the industry.”

Already, some early aggregators are beginning to emerge. In 2016, former Cablevision CEO James Dolan and his wife, former cable company chief operating officer Kristin, formed Dolan Family Ventures, an investment company focused on the ad-tech space. Dolan Family Ventures formed data analytics company 605 shortly after its purchase of Analytics Media Group, a New York-based data analytics specialist. The idea behind 605 is to combine AMG’s analytics and technology platform with set-top box data to provide clients with the kind of information that can help them develop targeted, optimized ad campaigns.

Kristin Dolan serves as CEO of 605, overseeing a management team that includes several former AMG and Cablevision ad executives, including former Cablevision Media Sales president Ben Tatta.

As ad buyers, distributors and networks become increasingly frustrated over how ads are sold, targeting will gain traction, Kristin Dolan said in an interview.

“In order to continue selling television advertising, the advertisers and the brands are expecting that they will get the same capability to target people that they have been experiencing on digital for years,” she said. “The time has come.”

And with NBCUniversal committing $1 billion to targeted inventory and consortiums like OpenAP emerging, she added that she sees the light at the end of the targeting tunnel.

“Television advertising is a great medium; [it’s] the best way to reach large audiences,” Dolan said. “Coupled with targeted calls to action, it really allows the brand to be more effective. Hopefully in the next 12 to 18 months, you will see significant increase in utilization to drive the industry forward. Buyers are demanding it, and the sellers like NBC are responding, as are the MVPDs. Everybody seems finally ready to move on this.”

That buyers are finally stepping up to the advanced ad plate is a significant development. In the past, as cable companies and data firms touted their ability to pinpoint homes via set-top box data, buyers have dismissed the technology as not being specific enough. An age-old argument against targeted ads was that just knowing a household buys dog food isn’t enough; advertisers wanted to know who was buying it and what they were watching.

Getting Real
But advances in data have made what was once the Holy Grail of targeted advertising a reality.

“Now you can do that,” One2One Media president Michael Bologna, a 20-year veteran of the advanced advertising business, said. “Media marketers are getting pressure from CMOs, and they are now pushing their buyers and their agencies and they are now changing the conversation.

“Will there be a time when an advertiser will say, ‘I completely don’t care what the program is as long as I know it’s the audience?’ We’re definitely headed down that road in certain ways, but content will always play a factor,” Bologna added. “But now that the advertisers are seeing first hand that they can target these granular segments, and they see that targeting these granular segments is generating sales, they are becoming less focused on ‘I have to be on this particular show at this particular time.’ That’s a really interesting and fulfilling trend.”

Bologna said advanced ad addressability won’t take over the TV ad market — he estimated that when fully deployed, 25% to 35% of an advertiser’s ad budget will go to addressable — but it will balance it.

“No major advertiser is ever going to put 100% of their budget toward addressability,” Bologna said. “If you wait until someone is 40 years old to show them a Mercedes ad when they can afford to buy a Mercedes, you’ve missed them. What addressability will ultimately do, in the long run, is help balance the frequency of messaging to the mass audience versus the very niche audience. And between now and then, every advertiser is going to have their own allocation methodology.”

WinView, a startup that has built a free mobile app that lets users win cash prizes by making situational predictions during live TV sporting events, said it has raised a $12 million “B” round from a group that includes Graham Holdings, Discovery Communications, LionTree Partners, and Ted Leonsis’ Monumental Sports & Entertainment.

WinView said the funding round was led by former TiVo and NBC exec Tom Rogers, who is also executive chairman of WinView. With the new round factored in, WinView has raised about $20 million.

WinView said it will use the funding to drive further development and marketing of its skill-based mobile app for a wide range of pro sports, including baseball, basketball and football.

WinView Games, an ad-supported, free app, covers sporting contests via in a live studio by a team of producers based on what is happening in real time. As an example, users can predict outcomes of a football game, including propositions such as the opening coin toss, outcomes of field goals, and placing wagers (in the form of points) on whether a running back might fumble the ball during the current quarter.

“It’s an incredibly skill-oriented game,” Rogers told Multichannel News last year when WinView announced it had raised about $6.5 million, and a $3.4 million “A” round led by Rogers and former Cablevision Systems (now Altice USA) vice chairman Hank Ratner, who is now president and CEO of Independent Sports and Entertainment, a New York-based firm that represents more than 300 athletes across several major pro sports.

RELATED: Betting on the Future of Enhanced TV (subscription required)

WinView currently offers apps for iOS and Android. The company said it has a portfolio of 40 “foundational patents” covering the synchronization of the second-screen with TV broadcasts and commercials. 

The new investors “is a major validation of our live TV sports prediction platform and its upside potential to engage TV viewers in a new way to enjoy televised sports," Rogers said in a statement. "The WinView Games app fills a sports culture void by converting fans and TV viewers from spectators into play-along-live participants. Following last fall's successful start, these investments will enable us to take a significant step forward toward reaching our mobile, social and gaming business goals while capitalizing on fan excitement across virtually all professional sports including basketball, baseball and football. We also will strive to be part of the in-stadium experience, enabling fans to predict plays from their seats."

"WinView's products complement Discovery's goal to reach and engage our superfans around the world and across all screens,” added David Zaslav, Discovery’s president and CEO.

TiVo chairman Tom Rogers and Cablevision Systems vice chairman Hank Ratner have led a $3.4 million series A round in WinView, a company that is working toward the commercial debut of a free mobile app that enables users to win cash prizes by making situational predictions during live TV sporting events. 

In the case of football games, those “propositions” could include predicting the outcomes of individual plays, whether a running back will fumble the ball during the current quarter,  and if a challenged play will be upheld or overturned.

WinView said it  has raised $6.5 million total and that, as part of their investment, Rogers and Ratner have been appointed co-chairman of the WinView board of directors.

Rogers and Ratner are backing WinView amid big changes underway at their respective companies.

Rogers stepped down as CEO of TiVo to become non-executive chairman effective Feb. 1, 2016. TiVo is now in the process of merging with Rovi.  Ratner is also former CEO of The Madison Square Garden  Company. Ratner’s current company, Cablevision Systems, is in the process of being acquired by Altice Group.

WinView said the  proceeds of the investment will be used to complete development of the WinView Games app and time the launch with the start of the 2016 professional football season. It tested the app during the 2015-2016 football season.

According to the  WinView site, a tournament held during Super Bowl 50 offered a prize pool of $1,000 that paid out the top 10 winners, with first place coming away with $400.

WinView, which claims to have a portfolio of 26 “foundational” patents that enable the synchronization of its app with TV broadcasts and commercials, noted that it is based on an ad-supported  business model, and that all games covered by its service are produced via a live studio and producers that track select sporting events in real time.  Its app was by European firm Ex Machina Group and is based on that vendor’s “PlayToTV platform.”

"Completion of this financing led by industry notables Tom Rogers and Hank Ratner will help drive the development and growth of WinView Games,” WinView founder and CEO Dave Lockton said, in a statement. "Live sports is premium programming with a massive captive audience, and it is one of the last bastions to engage millennials. “Technology and market conditions are now converging and giving rise to position our app, which is uniquely synchronized with live TV, to be a huge mobile engagement and revenue generation opportunity for the networks, leagues and advertisers involved, especially those seeking the coveted young adult male audience.”

"Playing along on a second screen while watching TV sports live is all the rage in Europe, having reduced fantasy sports to also-ran status,” Rogers added. “Millions of people in the U.S. are already using a second screen, checking stats while they watch, which has set the stage for this next big leap in sports television, enabling the viewer, unlike fantasy, to play along in real time with the live game itself.”

“Both Tom and I were involved with Dave when he pioneered the second screen play-along with TV programming category at his earlier company, Interactive Network,” Ratner said. “Now, with our involvement combined with our relationships with all the constituents in the sports television industry, including the leagues and networks, the stage is set for WinView to take off and scale this fall by tapping into sports fans' inherent desire to engage with this next-generation TV sports entertainment experience."

WinView also announced that its board has been expanded to include investors Steve Goodroe, former VP of Global Customer Marketing of Procter & Gamble and CEO of Dunnhumby USA; and Bryan Jacoboski, managing partner of Abingdon Capital Management. In addition, John Costello, President Global Marketing and Innovation of Dunkin Brands, Inc. and Global Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association, is joining the WinView advisory board. 

Get more #INTX2016 news.

The 2016 Cable Hall of Fame inductees are a group of significant players from a wide variety of industry disciplines, from present-day leaders in technology and operations to the executive who helped launch one of cable’s iconic programming services to a pair of key political power players with front-row seats to this year’s intriguing presidential election.

The new honorees include Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe; Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications; John D. Evans, chairman and CEO of Evans Telecommunications; Tom Rogers, non-executive chairman of TiVo; Robert J. Stanzione, chairman and CEO of Arris, and John O. “Dubby” Wynne, retired president and CEO of Landmark Communications, who helped that company launch The Weather Channel.

All will be honored at the 19th annual Cable Hall of Fame celebration, set for Monday (May 16) in the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel’s Grand Ballroom. The gala event, to benefit The Cable Center in Denver, coincides with the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s INTX: The Internet and Television Expo.

“I am thrilled to welcome these seven industry leaders into the Cable Hall of Fame,” said Michael Willner, president and CEO of Penthera Partners and the chairman of the 2016 Cable Hall of Fame selection committee. “This year’s class members represent so many different aspects of our industry — from programming to operators, to technology and equipment. Each one of them has had a unique and immense impact on the growth of the cable industry and its influence on today’s society.”

Also to be honored at the Hall of Fame ceremonies — in his hometown of Boston — is Continental Cablevision co-founder, chairman and CEO Amos Hostetter, 2016 recipient of the Bresnan Ethics in Business Award, named in honor of the late William Bresnan, founder and chairman of Bresnan Communications and a longtime member of the Cable Center board (see profile).

Katty Kay, lead anchor of BBC World News America, the BBC’s flagship U.S. newscast, will return to emcee the Boston event. She also hosted the 2012 Hall of Fame celebration.

“We are delighted to have Katty Kay return as the master of ceremonies for our Cable Hall of Fame celebration,” Jana Henthorn, president and CEO of The Cable Center, said. “The Cable Hall of Fame is the premier event that honors our industry, and I look forward to welcoming industry friends and associates as we gather to salute our seven honorees.”

Special thanks to Erica Stull of Stull WordWorks for honoree profiles.

Amos B. Hostetter Jr.
2016 Bresnan Ethics in
Business Award Honoree

Long known as a role model and industry statesman, Amos Hostetter is a natural fit for the Bresnan Ethics in Business Award. Over the course of his more than 50-year career, Hostetter has consistently demonstrated ethical leadership and personal commitment to community and society.

The co-founder, chairman and CEO of Continental Cablevision entered the cable industry in 1963. That’s when he and Amherst fraternity brother Irv Grousbeck each came up with $1,500 to build cable operations in Tiffin and Fostoria, Ohio. From that humble beginning and 4,000 subscribers, Continental Cablevision grew to serve 4.2 million customers across the U.S. before it was purchased by US West in 1996. Continental was the nation’s third-largest cable MSO at the time.

Unlike many cable companies that got bigger through acquisition, Continental grew by building new franchises, a process that put company leaders in close contact with local franchise officials. The early days of cable franchising were rough and tumble, with operators and communities aggressively pressing negotiating advantages. Unimpeachable ethical standards were a trademark of Continental’s franchise activities, and the “square shooter” reputation helped the company succeed.

“The single most important thing I did to maintain ethics in the company was recruiting,” Hostetter said. “Irv and I wanted people with a well-tuned moral compass. The standing rule was, ‘don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read about in the newspaper.’”

Hostetter has served as a board member and chairman of NCTA, and he was a highly respected representative for the cable industry. In his 1999 interview for The Cable Center’s oral history program, Hostetter told interviewer Steve Nelson that cable was an industry that can do well by doing good. “I think the companies that have set a standard of service and performance and contribution to their communities have in fact been the companies that have financially done the best … I would certainly argue that that was Continental’s objective in its years in business.”

Hostetter was a founding board member and former chairman of C-SPAN and of Cable in the Classroom. He also served on the boards of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Children’s Television Workshop. Today, he is chairman of Pilot House Associates.

His charitable work includes positions as chair emeritus of the WGBH board of trustees and Amherst College, and trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Mika Brzezinski
Co-Host
MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’

With more than two decades on air and multiple best-selling books to her credit, Mika Brzezinski has earned her place in the spotlight. The co-host of one of cable’s most popular news shows started out in Hartford, Conn., as a broadcaster, editor and reporter with WTIC-TV. Brzezinski went national in 1996 as a CBS News correspondent and anchor. Her work for CBS included live reporting from lower Manhattan during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She moved to cable in 2007 as co-host of Morning Joe, where she provides counterpoint to the comments of co-host Joe Scarborough.

Politics and hard work come naturally to Brzezinski. Growing up during the Carter administration as the daughter of national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and sculptor Emilie Brzezinski, she was exposed early to big ideas and remarkable people. The family hosted dignitaries, including the pope, and the budding journalist had a view of work-life balance at the highest level. She said her father’s political experience, writing and ability to communicate policy helped prepare her for her current job. And she credited her mother for fostering her career commitment.

“She was always an artist first and a wife and mother second,” Brzezinski recalled. “To be a better mother and wife, she needed to foster her passion for art. In doing so, she taught me how to be the best version of myself by following my own passions. I respect my dad for so many reasons, but one of them is his faith in my mom and her talent.”

As the demands of covering a presidential campaign increase, Brzezinski recharges by running. Central Park is her favorite route when on home turf, and she often conducts interviews and business calls as she runs. A student and chronicler of the unique challenges women confront in their careers, Brzezinski is an advocate for women in the workplace — especially through her Know Your Value campaign. She advises the next generation of female journalists: “Don’t apologize — speak with conviction and confidence. Don’t worry about making everyone comfortable — command respect first and friendship will follow.”

Pat Esser
President
Cox Communications

Growing up in Algona, Iowa, Pat Esser was hooked on cable early. The future Cox executive was dazzled when cable came to town and his family suddenly had access to 12 TV channels.

“Our rotary antenna was our portal to the world,” he recalled. As a youngster, Esser also learned about personal commitment to customer service while running deliveries for his family’s dry-cleaning business. “I understand what it means to have your family name on the door. I fully appreciate what the Cox family feels about their company.”

Esser got his first cable job climbing poles and then making door-to-door sales calls while studying at the University of Northern Iowa. After graduation in 1979, Esser joined Cox as director of programming with the company’s new cable system in Hampton Roads, Va. He returned to UNI to earn a master’s degree in communications media and then came back to Cox for his first big professional challenge: building the company’s advertising sales division, known today as Cox Media. “Building a cause, building a business” was the source of some of his happiest memories, Esser said.

Named Cox’s corporate vice president of advertising sales in 1991, Esser became the company’s Western division vice president of operations in 1999. Promotions continued, and he was ultimately named president of Cox Communications in 2006.

Esser has led the Cox team through a range of business obstacles over the years, but none would be as challenging as Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Cox operates in Louisiana markets, and Katrina was devastating for the company’s employees and communities, as well as its cable plant. “Being part of that recovery, how Cox responded to our people, our customers, changed me forever,” Esser recalled. “[Cox chairman] Jim Kennedy didn’t blink. He said, ‘Make sure we know where our employees are at, make sure they’re OK, that they know we’re going to rebuild the market and they’ll have jobs.’”

That experience was one of many that cemented Esser’s passion for his job. “I’ve been at Cox 37 years, and I still love coming to work,” he said. “My heart rate still picks up.”

John D. Evans
Chairman and CEO
Evans Telecommunications

John Evans has been a leader in media from an early age. He served four years as a U.S. Navy communications officer during the Vietnam buildup, and was put in command of Navy television worldwide at 26. He went into radio after the service, but saw cable television as a “sunshine industry” with huge potential.

When American Television and Communications offered him a cable-system job in Charleston, W. Va., in 1972, he grabbed it. In 1976, Arlington TeleCommunications Corp. (ARTEC) recruited him to head up the creation of the first cable system in the Washington, D.C. area. Because it served members of Congress, FCC commissioners and other federal officials, the Arlington system played an outsize industry role as cable grew and drew greater scrutiny.

When ARTEC’s investors sold in 1983, the system became Hauser Communications’s flagship operation. Evans became president of Hauser Communications, working with industry visionary Gus Hauser for more than 12 years.

Even with an impressive cable operations background, Evans may be best known for his contribution to programming. In 1977, he went to lunch with an old Navy buddy, Brian Lamb, who was then Washington bureau chief for Cablevision magazine. Evans commented that the House of Representatives had just installed closed-circuit cameras. The two friends talked about beaming the House’s closed-circuit feed across the river via microwave to the Arlington system for public distribution.

“Maybe we could open the government up,” Evans recalled thinking. He believed doing so might prevent another Vietnam War. “We filed for a microwave license from Capitol Hill to our headend site, and agreed to provide free of charge all the technical space and facilities.” That was the start of C-SPAN.

Evans has been on the National Cable & Telecommunications Association board of directors since 1981 — the organization’s longest-serving board member. He has also been a C-SPAN board member since the network’s inception in 1979. Public service is a strong value for Evans. He represents the industry as the only nonacademic trustee of Internet2, an advanced, higher-education technology community connected by 18,000 miles of fiber backbone.

Designated a “Patron of Diplomacy,” Evans serves on the U.S. Department of State’s Fine Arts Committee and its LGBT Global Equality Fund. As founder of the John D. Evans Foundation, he is committed to social justice, AIDS vaccine research, environmental protection, technological innovation, education and the arts.

Tom Rogers
Chairman
TiVo

If Tom Rogers were a superhero, he might be known as the “Rejuvenator.” Over the course of more than 30 years in telecommunications, TiVo’s chairman has made a specialty of bringing organizations back from the brink. “I guess I’ve always had fun when something that looked like it was over and irrelevant was born again,” he said.

Rogers’s early fascination with media was inspired by an eighth-grade social studies teacher. “He brought media into the classroom as a way of understanding the world,” he says. Rogers was probably the only teenager in Scarsdale, N.Y., with his own TV Guide subscription who also had a fascination with the magazine’s weekly column on the FCC and industry activity.

After graduating from Columbia Law School and working for two years with a Wall Street law firm, Rogers began his telecom career in 1981. He was hired as senior counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Telecommunications, Consumer Protection and Finance Subcommittee, with responsibilities that included FCC oversight and drafting the Cable Act of 1984. The ’84 Act, he said, “was very much about unleashing the cable industry’s potential for more channels to develop, which was a key theory of the case.” Even with his belief in the promise of cable, Rogers said, “it surprised me just how many channels, how much content, how many sources of information, ultimately emerged.”

He joined the private sector in 1987, going to NBC and quickly becoming first president of NBC Cable, starting up the division and launching CNBC. Rogers then led Primedia for four years. The company owned media properties ranging from Cable World to New York magazine.

He then joined TiVo in 2005 as CEO. As cable operators developed competing digital video recorders, TiVo’s successful run appeared to be in jeopardy. Rogers attacked that issue with a vengeance by bringing TiVo ultimately to a full embrace by the cable industry and setting the company back on a path to growth. TiVo now serves about 75 operators in more than 30 countries. In May, the company agreed to be acquired by Rovi in a deal valued at about $1.1 billion.

Rogers advises the next generation of cable programming executives not to “rest on existing models, but know that if you don’t push to the next level, someone else is gonna push there and make you less meaningful or relevant in a changing content distribution and viewership world … No matter how many noes others say you will get, if you’ve got the right plan, the cable industry will listen and ultimately buy in.”

Joe Scarborough
Co-host
MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’

Joe Scarborough has always dreamed big. As a kid, he wanted to be “an all-star shortstop in the major leagues and a guitarist in a band bigger than the Beatles.” And he has been talking about politics most of his life.

The Morning Joe co-host enjoyed watching the news with his father from an early age. “We would watch election night returns together,” he recalled. “Those were some of my earliest and best memories with him.”

As an attorney in Florida, Scarborough continued to pursue his interest in politics. He ran as a Republican in Florida’s 1st Congressional District, seeking to replace the retiring Democratic incumbent. Scarborough won that vote and went on to serve four terms in Congress, representing Florida from 1994 to 2001 and serving on the Judiciary, Armed Services, Oversight and National Security committees.

After leaving Congress, Scarborough found his way into cable as host of Scarborough Country, an evening political show on MSNBC. When Don Imus left the network’s morning show in 2007, Scarborough lobbied to replace him. Morning Joe debuted in July 2007.

Scarborough said he believes his time as a politician gives him valuable perspective as a political commentator. “When I was a congressman,” he said, “I witnessed politics up close and saw what happened behind closed doors. That insight allowed me to call out politicians when they weren’t being straightforward with the voters and the press. Being a politician … has always enhanced my analysis and given me better intuition in interviews.”

In addition to his career as a political representative, cable commentator and author, Scarborough has almost achieved one of his early dreams. They’re not bigger than the Beatles, but Scarborough’s band, Morning Joe Music, is an important part of his life. The nine-piece group performs regularly in New York, and recently went on the road for a gig at South by Southwest in Austin. Scarborough plays guitar and sings lead.

“I just love music,” he said. “It’s great to share the experience with other people — especially members of the band who have become my friends. I love the process from start to finish.”

Robert J. Stanzione
Chairman and CEO
Arris

“When a door opens, walk through.” Robert Stanzione’s advice to future cable engineers has guided his own career and yielded tremendous results.

As a kid in South Carolina, Stanzione dreamed of being an architect, an airline pilot or an engineer. He chose the third option, earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Clemson University and a master’s in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University. “Engineering was and still is a great basic education; a way to get started in industry,” he said. “The rest of it was on-the-job training.”

AT&T gave the young engineer room to explore. He spent 25 years with the company, eventually moving into general management. Stanzione was introduced to the exciting world of cable when he managed an AT&T-Bell Labs project with ANTEC Corporation. “It was sort of a skunk works within Bell Labs, the first hybrid fiber-coax in the industry. I became fascinated, not only with the technology, but with the dynamic aspects of the cable industry and the people in it … It was ready, aim, fire; let’s try it out, see if it works, and if it works, we’ll deploy it.”

Nortel Networks and ANTEC formed a joint venture in 1995 and recruited Stanzione to start Arris Interactive. It was an exciting time as the cable industry prepared to introduce telephone service. Stanzione recalled: “It was a fairly radical idea in the early ’90s that a cable operator could offer reliable telephone service. It was a lot of fun being at the front end of that and seeing our products going into networks all over the world that allowed cable companies to offer reliable two-way service. We knew the technology was solid, but we didn’t know whether the industry would accept the responsibility of this culture of reliability. It came through with flying colors.”

Stanzione and his team worked their way through the telecom crash of 2001, subsequently building Arris into a Fortune 500 enterprise through a series of strategic mergers, acquisitions and the internal development of advanced broadband and video platforms. He has walked through lots of doors over the years, and advises others to do the same.

“Just have fun!” he advised. “[Cable] is such a dynamic business. It always has been and will continue to be. Look forward, try new things.”

John O. “Dubby” Wynne
Retired President and CEO
Landmark Communications

Although he wasn’t a weatherman, Dubby Wynne has always known which way the wind was blowing in cable. He and his Landmark colleagues seized an opportune moment in the industry’s growth to build The Weather Channel, an international institution.

A talented high school athlete, Wynne liked competition and change. “I went to law school because I thought I wanted to go into politics, and quickly learned that isn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a businessman.” He joined Landmark in 1974 and was in charge of the company’s broadcasting and video division and new business development by 1980.

“It was one of those crazy times,” he said. “Cable programming provided a rising tide for lots of us. We got a lot more responsibility than we would have gotten in mature industries.”

When broadcast meteorologist John Coleman proposed creating a national TV-weather service for cable, Wynne was intrigued, but believed that local weather was the real opportunity for a new network supported by advertising. Wynne’s team created a device to insert local National Weather Service forecasts into cable system headends. The Weather Channel was ready to roll in 1982.

Wynne remembers, “When we launched our service, most people were just laughing at [the 24-hour weather concept]. Although in some areas like New York City, people already carried an umbrella all the time. In California, they said, ‘I don’t care, it never rains here.’ But we knew from our television and radio experience that weather in most communities was a subject of high interest.”

After a year, Wynne and team realized their ad-supported financial model wouldn’t work. “We needed subscriber fees. We showed our finances to the cable operators. It was just a few pennies per subscriber, but getting that done was what made The Weather Channel successful.”

Retired since 2001, Wynne continues a full schedule of philanthropy and volunteer work, including improving the state of Virginia’s approach to economic development. “I don’t think there’s any better feeling than helping other people improve their lives,” he said. “When you take somebody who doesn’t have much, help them break through, when you help an institution get better … it’s just gratifying.”

TiVo said its board has named Naveen Chopra, the DVR and video software company’s current CFO, to interim CEO, effective Jan. 30, 2016.

Chopra, who joined TiVo in 2003, succeeds Tom Rogers, who is stepping down as CEO at the end of the month, but will remain with TiVo as non-executive chairman of the board.

Prior to TiVo, Chopra held exec slots at several tech-focused companies, including HP, Microsoft, Moxi Digital (now part of Arris), Ispiri and Ofoto.

"I look forward to continuing to work with my talented colleagues to grow value for our shareholders," Chopra said, in a statement. "Moving forward, we will be highly focused on product innovation, accelerating profitability, enhancing subscription growth, and securing new distribution agreements across an expanded geographic footprint -- in addition to safeguarding TiVo's invaluable intellectual property."

"Naveen is the perfect choice to serve as interim CEO," added Rogers. "He and I have worked incredibly closely for the last 11 years, and he deserves tremendous credit for much of the progress TiVo has made in becoming the global leader in advanced television. I am enthusiastic about continuing to work with Naveen as we step into our new roles at TiVo."

TiVo also announced that Wendy Markus Webb, currently CEO of Kestrel Corporate Advisors,  has joined the company board and its audit committee, effective January 11. She is also an independent director of ABM Industries, PetSmart Charities, Inc. and 9 Spokes, and has previously been with The Walt Disney Company, Tennenbaum Capital Partners, Ticketmaster Entertainment, PaineWebber Inc. and Lehman Brothers.

Dan Moloney, TiVo’s lead independent director and a former Motorola and General Instrument exec, called Webb “a valuable addition to TiVo's board of directors as we advance TiVo's position in the global market and continue our search for a permanent CEO.” 

TiVo ended its fiscal Q3 with 6.46 million subscribers, a number that includes 5.51 via TiVo's partnerships with MVPDs.

TiVo has been testing a network/cloud DVR with several operators, including with Virgin Media, for a while but it doesn’t appear that anyone’s ready to take the plunge just yet. 

“It’s not something that many operators are prepared to move forward with quickly as it relates to their core set-top service,” TiVo president and CEO Tom Rogers said ahead of the company’s Q3 call. TiVo showed off a prototype of its network DVR at the 2014 CES.

“It’s really less about us and our ability to provide it and more about when their readiness will be there, which has a lot of hardware implications for them, as well as content rights implications for them,” he said, noting that “we’ve trialed it, and it works.”

Those legal and storage implications are particularly acute in the U.S., where network and cloud DVR offerings must make individual recordings, versus a more efficient model in which a copy could be shared by multiple subs. It’s the approach that Comcast and Cablevision Systems are using for their respective cloud DVR and “remote-storage” DVR products.

For now, Rogers said there’s more interest among TiVo’s partners on approaches that enable viewers to access and sideload recorded shows via mobile apps and devices, something that TiVo already does, and a capability that Verizon FiOS is starting to introduce on its Quantum TV platform.

Elsewhere in TiVo-land, the company is about to extend two features found on its new Bolt DVR – QuickMode and SkipMode – to its last-gen Roamio DVR family.

Per this TiVo Roamio holiday sale page, QuickMode and  SkipMode are slated for release on TiVo Roamio DVRs on Dec. 10.  

QuickMode enables playback at 1.3 times real time with pitch-corrected audio. However, SkipMode, a feature that lets users skip commercial breaks in recorded shows with the click of a button on almost two dozen channels, will initially be offered on Roamio products in the San Francisco/Bay Area and Chicago markets.

TiVo announced Tuesday that long-time president and CEO Tom Rogers will step down from that position on Jan. 31, 2016 (the end of the company's current fiscal year), and will continue with the DVR pioneer as non-executive chairman of the board, effective Feb. 1, 2016.

TiVo said its board has formed a search committee to identify an internal or external candidate to lead the company.

TiVo also announced that Dan Moloney, a cable industry vet who last served as president of Motorola Mobility, has been appointed its lead independent director.  Google acquired Motorola in 2011, and sold its Motorola Home unit to Arris in April 2013 for $2.35 billion. Notably, TiVo and Motorola settled a DVR patent case in mid-2013. According to this TiVo 8-K filing, Moloney succeeds Thomas Wolzein, who has resigned from the TiVo board.

During his 11-year tenure as CEO of TiVo, the company has made significant inroads with cable operators in the U.S. and in Europe, and successfully settled a string of lucrative patent-related lawsuits with Motorola, Cisco Systems, Time Warner Cable, Dish Network, AT&T and Verizon Communications, and is currently pursuing a case against Samsung.  One of the biggest challenges faced by Rogers at TiVo has been growing the company's retail business, which it is now attacking with the Bolt, a new 4K-capable HD-DVR with integrated ad-skipping technology.

TiVo ended its fiscal Q2 with 6.03 million total subs (941,000 TiVo-owned, and 5.09 million through MSO partners).  TiVo, which reports Q3 results on November 24 and said it will take a one-time charge in Q4 of approximately $11 million related to Rogers's departure, recently bought Cubiware, a middleware vendor that will help TiVo bring its platform to lower-cost devices and enable it to pursue business in emerging markets more aggressively. 

Per the 8K, Rogers has entered into a transition agreement, effective November 13, to which he will receive $4.6 million, an additional bonus based on performance criteria, accelerated vesting of all equity-related awards held by Rogers and health and welfare coverage for up to 24 months. “Mr. Rogers has agreed not to solicit TiVo employees for 18 months after his resignation date and to release any claims he may have against the company,” the filing adds.

"TiVo is a great company today -- and I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of turning it around and building it from its DVR roots into the leader in providing next-generation TV in the United States and around the world," Rogers said, in a statement. "With the recent successful launch of one of the best reviewed retail television products ever, the new TiVo Bolt, and notable progress in our other core businesses, the Board and I agreed that this was an opportune time to seamlessly transition to a new leadership team.  At a personal level, I will welcome the reduced bicoastal travel this will entail. And as a shareholder, I look forward to continuing to serve all TiVo shareholders as non-executive chairman." 

"We are confident that Tom and TiVo's experienced leadership team will ensure a smooth transition to a new CEO and president as Tom transitions to non-executive Chairman of the Board," Moloney added. "We thank Tom for his countless contributions to TiVo during his time as CEO and president. The Board believes that these accomplishments aren't fully reflected in TiVo's stock price." 

Before joining TiVo, Rogers was chairman and CEO of magazine and website publisher Primedia. Before that, he was president of NBC Cable and executive VP of NBC, and the network’s chief strategist. He is also a founder of CNBC and helped to establish MSNBC.  He was also a co-chairman of A&E/History and played key roles at other networks, including what was then Court TV, Bravo, AMC, IFC and the National Geographic Channel. 

More to come...

The Cable Center has elected seven industry leaders to be part of its Cable Hall Of Fame Class of 2016, the organization announced Thursday.

The new honorees include Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, MSNBC’s Morning Joe; Pat Esser, President, Cox Communications, Inc.; John D. Evans, Chairman and CEO, Evans Telecommunications Co.; Tom Rogers, President and CEO, TiVo Inc.; Robert J. Stanzione, Chairman and CEO, ARRIS, and John O. "Dubby" Wynne, Retired President and CEO, Landmark Communications, Inc.

The Cable Hall Of Fame induction ceremonies will take place next May during the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s (NCTA) Internet and Television Expo (INTX).

“I am thrilled to welcome these seven industry leaders into the Cable Hall of Fame,” said Michael Willner, president and CEO of Penthera Partners and the chairman of the 2016 Cable Hall Of Fame selection committee. “This year’s class members represent so many different aspects of our industry – from programming to operators, to technology and equipment. Each one of them has had a unique and immense impact on the growth of the cable industry and its influence on today’s society."

Added Larry Satkowiak, president and CEO of The Cable Center: “Congratulations to the Cable Hall of Fame Class of 2016. Each of these individuals have helped the cable industry change the world, and we are looking forward to honoring them at the Cable Hall of Fame celebration during INTX."