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Cable World, March 21, 2005

By Paul S. Maxwell

Wow.

Early this year.

In just a couple of weeks.

In the City by the Bay.

(By the way, look out for the preshow issue from CableWORLD in your in- box soon. In it you'll find a detailed look at the San Francisco sojourn and an in-depth interview with National Show chairman Steve Burke of Comcast.)

This year's stuff really gets going on Sunday as the NCTA crams the whole National Show into one less day. The opening general session will set the stage for an interesting--and jam-packed--three days of looking at the entire spectrum in which cable plays today.

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Oddly, though, the program doesn't directly pit cable against its marketplace competitors. It takes a "co-opetition" line instead, beginning with the opening session featuring a couple of cable operators (well, sort of, there's Paul Allen and Cablevision's Tom Rutledge) talking with Electronic Arts game developer/founder Bing Gordon and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang with the ever-interesting and even-tempered CNBC reporter Ron Insana. (An aside or four: Yang and I were on the initial advisory board of ZD-TV, which passed through Paul Allen's hands on its way to Comcast. And I've found Ron Insana to be one of the nicest, and smartest, guys in the business.)

Video games plus news and searches and advertising on one hand and cable operators on the other. How will they work together? Or apart?

Later Sunday, Comcast's Mark Coblitz might have another view of the digital future...and maybe he'll even talk about bedrocks and IP-everywhere (and maybe answer the real question...before or after SBC?).

Monday's general session brings the anti-Yahoo! together with a little different mix. The lone cable operator (primarily, for now) is Brian Roberts in the (sort of) role of moderator with "suppliers" to the brave new world of digitalized cable, including Cisco's John Chambers, AOL's Jonathan Miller, Google co-founder Larry Page and Disney's Bob Iger.

Later that day, our own Shirley Brady takes a look at cable's original programming...well, original to networks that got their starts with cable distribution.

Tuesday morning's general session puts two operators back on center stage: Time Warner's Glenn Britt and Cox's Jim Robbins. On this one we might learn some wireless plans as Sprint's Len Lauer is quizzed by Fox News' Stuart Varney. Meanwhile, RealNetwork's Rob Glaser will tout downloading the world. And we'll see if the guys who only ride on corporate jets will understand movies and music on laptops (on commercial airplanes and in college dorms especially-- remember convergence? It done happened already).

And, just so no one leaves early Tuesday, the closing panel--sans cable ops--features a "Hollywood" look at our world. CNBC's Maria Bartiromo gets to quiz her boss and others for the cable audience. This one features GE/NBC Universal's Bob Wright, News Corp.'s Peter Chernin, DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg and Time Warner's Jeffrey Bewkes. (More asides: Wright was a cable operator once, at Cox when GE had designs on the business; Chernin is a great skier, and guy, who once programmed Showtime; Katzenberg will not attend the Iger session; and Bewkes, of course, once ran HBO and has a sublime sense of humor.)

So, we'll see ya'll in Baghdad by the Bay...probably on the Saturday before!

Technology Industry

My Back Pages: Ready…Set…Show!

Cable World, March 21, 2005

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