Editor's Letter: My Visit to Tyler

Cable World, July 11, 2005

By John P. Ourand

I'm a city slicker. I live in Washington, D.C., and take business trips to the country's biggest cities from New York to Los Angeles. I'm comfortable in these places.

So I figured I should travel to Tyler, Texas, to check out the type of community that Buford Media Group, our Independent Operator of the Year, serves. I checked into the Ramada Inn (apparently there aren't any W Hotels in all of Tyler!) and headed to Bennigan's for dinner (the chicken strips were heavy on the breading). I then walked and drove around town, chatting with various locals. As far as I was concerned, I was having the perfect small-market experience, one that would make me appreciate everything that Ben Hooks was doing with Buford Media.

The problem is that Tyler, which is where Buford is based, is too big. With a population of nearly 84,000, Tyler is close to five times bigger than the home of Buford's largest system, in McAlester, Okla. (population 18,000). In fact, Cox is selling its Tyler system, and Hooks believes the asking price will be too high for him.

Still, it was instructive to wander in and out of the strip malls of Tyler, if only to see firsthand how cable is doing in America's small towns. According to Hooks, cable operators can beat back satellite and thrive in small towns if they continue to innovate while keeping costs down.

"It's true that rural subscribers have less available money to spend on discretionary things," Hooks says. "However, there's less to spend it on. It wasn't like there was a movie theater in town, two dozen restaurants and all these other expenses. It was easy to focus the money they had available for discretionary spending on cable because everybody liked television as much as they do in major markets--maybe even more so."

It seems to me that the industry should be paying more attention to operators like Hooks who are on the front lines bridging the digital divide, something that puts the industry in a good light with regulators.

The smaller guys, however, are losing their lobbying voice in state associations across the country, where bigger MSOs are flexing their muscles and demanding the majority of the votes since they pay the majority of the dues. "It's really collapsing a lot of state organizations," Hooks says.

Independent operators' diminishing influence at the state level comes as they are finding their voice in D.C., thanks mainly to the efforts of the American Cable Association. "On the Hill, there's sympathy for the little guy," Hooks says. "Generally, we have to work harder. There's a lot more sweat equity in what we do to survive."

From my vantage point (that would be a booth at the Tyler Bennigan's), I'd have to agree.

[Copyright 2005 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]