The 10 Toughest Jobs in Cable

Cable World, June 6, 2005

Our hands-down winner this year is Adelphia's CFO Vanessa Wittman.

This is a list of tough jobs. It includes dangerous jobs. It includes physically demanding jobs. And it includes complicated and confusing jobs.

Our hands-down winner this year is Adelphia's CFO Vanessa Wittman, who certainly has had cable's most complicated job for the past two years. Sure, she's not splicing fiber in the snow. Nor is she on the front lines dealing with irate consumers. But as the point person at Adelphia, she's had the difficult task of trying to untangle the Rigas family's tortured finances. That's a tough gig.

The nomination process showed that many cable guys and gals truly believe they have the toughest job. We had flacks nominating other flacks. We heard from lawyers, fund-raisers and others, each claiming that they have the toughest job in cable.

Here's our choices:

Grace Under Fire

1. Adelphia CFO

Vanessa Wittman

That we've selected Adelphia CFO Vanessa Wittman as having the hardest job in cable comes as no surprise to her boss, CEO Bill Schleyer.

"This is one of the most complicated jobs anyone's ever had," Schleyer says, "not just in the cable industry but in the history of business."

Although Wittman saw fiber-optic network provider 360Networks through bankruptcy, nothing could have prepared her for Adelphia, she says. "It's orders of magnitude harder" than anything she's done.

Unlike many other chief financial officers in cable, Wittman is solely responsible for Adelphia's normal planning and control functions, securities and merger and acquisition functions and Securities and Exchange Commission reporting. (Cox and Time Warner Cable are divisions of larger companies, while two executives divide Comcast's CFO responsibilities.) Complicating her day-to- day CFO functions, of course, are enormous bankruptcy issues, the reconstruction of the company's financial records for the past several years, the sale of the company and the ensuing transition to not one but two companies, Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Schleyer gives Wittman credit for keeping her staff focused and motivated as well as for the company's huge accomplishments in recent months. Among them: the sale, which was concluded after a yearlong auction and a grueling 12-week negotiation period, the restatement of several years of financials and the settlement with the government. Further, she's handled everything with grace, Schleyer adds.

"If you can't keep a sense of humor with all of the crazy stuff that happens, you'd be in a straightjacket," Wittman says. "Things happen that you seriously could not make up." In their calmer moments, she and Schleyer have a running joke that they're ruined for other jobs. "We'll just be bored," she says. --Mavis Scanlon

No Comment

2. Cablevision Spokesperson

Charlie Schueler, SVP, media and communications

There's nobody in cable who can offer a better "no comment" than Charlie Schueler. My personal favorite is Schueler's off-the-record no comment. If he hasn't copyrighted it, he should. It's pure Bethpage magic. It happens when you're asking Schueler about something he's not going to comment on. You've tried for the fifth time to get him to say something--anything--beyond "no comment." That's when Schueler strikes: "Can we go off the record?" he says. I greedily say yes, sit up straighter, grab my pen. "OK. Off the record, we really can't talk about it." He gets me with that every time.

I know what you're thinking--it's not so tough to stonewall a bunch of press jackals with a few well-placed no comments. But it is. Especially if you have to explain to the New York press why your company isn't showing the Yankees. Especially if you have to explain to the financial press why your bosses (father chairman and son CEO) are publicly fighting. Especially if you have to explain to New York's sports press how the Knicks missed the playoffs with the NBA's highest payroll. And especially when your mandate is to keep reporters away, rather than invite them in and show them around.

And you have to do all of this by saying nothing.

The beauty of Schueler's no comments is that trade reporters personally like him despite the lack of quotable quotes. And he's well regarded in the industry: For the record, Schueler received more nominations from cable colleagues than anyone on this list. --John P. Ourand

Circuit Overload

3. CSR During Hurricane Season

Liz Hicks, lead CSR, Bright House Networks

On average, Bright House Networks' system in Orlando, Fla., gets more than 600,000 calls per month. But last September was no average month for Bright House, when more than 1.2 million calls poured into the system's customer service department and automated response lines.

Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne had just swept through central Florida, a few weeks after Hurricane Charley came calling. For lead customer service rep Liz Hicks, an already tough role of handling inquiries and complaints day after day became an endless marathon, as she spent days taking more than 100 calls an hour.