The New Orleans convention center was an uneasy place last week for an industry that feels most comfortable in the ethereal spin machine of hyperbole. Nearly 28,000 attendees of the National Cable Television Association's annual show made peace with the truth: Cable modems aren't yet a major force. Wall Street hasn't yet come around. And widespread video competition - with the exception of expensive direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services - isn't here yet.
"This is the year of separating rhetoric from reality," crowed David Woodrow, senior vice president-digital services at Cox Communications Inc.
Most executives agreed that the industry should be cautious as it rolls out cable modems, which many - including some of the more bullish of Wall Street analysts - see as a potential trump card against DBS competition. But while some urgency exists to stop the flight of cable customers to DBS, executives said perfecting the technology is more important than rushing the product to market.
"I have no doubt we're sitting on a gold mine," said Brian L. Roberts, president of Comcast Corp. But the cable TV industry has to "get it right" rather than dumping a bunch of cable modems into markets before the kinks are worked out. "It's a lot more than just a fast pipe," he said. "We're taking our time."
Enthusiasm even came from outside the cable industry. "Of all mediums, cable is going to be the best in the high-speed data world," asserted Craig Mundie, senior VP-consumer platforms division at Microsoft.
And while several executives said the industry has made mistakes in the past, Tele-Communications Inc.'s new president, Leo Hindery, admitted that TCI "fired people that should not have been fired" when it canned 2,500 employees late last year - mostly in customer service and marketing departments. Mr. Hindery, who took over after the layoffs occurred, told attendees that cable needs its customer service people to show the public that it's part of the community and separate itself from the national DBS services. "This isn't buying records on a 1-800 number," he said.
Meanwhile, Ted Turner, the ever-ornery vice chairman of Time Warner Inc., vowed to make it "as tough as we possibly can" for ASkyB - a joint venture of News Corp. and MCI Communications Corp. - to merge with American DBS provider Echostar Communications Corp. The deal was announced two weeks ago. In typical Turner style, he accused News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch of trying to "control this country."
And on that defensive note, cable executives left the convention wondering when cable will finally take what they feel is its rightful place as the country's preeminent telecommunications titan. This year, at least, cable's meeting of the minds produced few answers.
