Meet the System: Quad Cities

Cable World,  Sept 26, 2005  

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An initially reluctant system chief uses '60s-era protests, incentives and training to instill entrepreneurial spirit and fight DBS.

By M.C. Antil

Take Interstate 80 west from Chicago, and somewhere out past those broad shoulders, the suburban sprawl, the tangle of highways, the endless cornrows and the cradle of America's conservative renaissance, the Midwest unofficially begins.

Many who take that drive will tell you they don't care what that arch in St. Louis is supposed to symbolize. To them, the real gateway to the Midwest is the patchwork of communities along the banks of the Mississippi, about 175 miles west of Chicago-places with names like Moline, Rock Island, Davenport and Bettendorf, proud little communities whose residents years ago (perhaps as a result of their unique bond with the mighty river whose waters they shared) gave their little corner of America's plains a collective name. They called it the Quad Cities.

In 2003, when he was asked to head the Mediacom system in the Quad Cities of western Illinois and eastern Iowa, Scott Westerman was willing to take the assignment for a very personal reason. Even though he had retired from cable in 1998 (he's a veteran of Continental Cablevision) and was living as an entrepreneur in Florida, his mother was terminally ill in Ann Arbor, Mich. Westerman's intention was to take the regional VP of operations post because it brought him back to the Midwest, nearer to his mother, and to do it for as long as was necessary, given her condition. But then something happened that changed his mind and made him alter his plans.

Weeks into the job, Westerman realized that cable was not the same industry he'd left years earlier. In the interim it had been reenergized by the power of digital. In addition, he found he'd inherited a staff of managers, technicians and service reps as motivated as any he had ever encountered. One might say he fooled around and fell in love. "I didn't come back to this business for the long term," Westerman says. But the combination of the new-look industry, his motivated staff and the small-town values that define life in the Quad Cities quickly changed his mind.

Westerman's new attitude toward longevity and his job came at a critical time. Competition from DBS was rapidly eating away at Mediacom's core basic customers. How bad was the hemorrhaging? "Pretty bad; almost desperate," a member of the system's management team says.

Add to that a movement for Iowa cities to build municipal cable systems and offer high-speed Internet service. That initiative, known as "Opportunity Iowa," has resonated with franchising authorities of the Mediacom system in nearby Dubuque. Should it be successful it might yet weave its way into the hearts and minds of Quad Cities politicos.

How He Did It

Westerman has managed to slow the outflow of subscribers by instilling an entrepreneurial, can-do attitude in his employees. In addition, he's:

* reached out to local retailers, giving them incentives to sell and install Mediacom products;

* retooled the direct sales force and given it incentives to bring "illegals" back to cable;

* installed a training program that teaches all employees about the financial aspects of their system; and

* created a proactive "Save Team" that's reduced monthly disconnects by 30%.

Westerman has always been one to dive in headfirst. Years ago local ham radio operators in Michigan were fighting to keep cable out, citing concerns with signal leakage. What did Westerman do? He bought a ham radio and joined the local ham club. Within a couple of years he was its president. Recently, he wondered how podcasting would impact cable. So Westerman began two regular podcasts; one about 1960s rock and roll radio and the other about new media, in conjunction with Michigan State University.

That willingness to dive right in and take ownership are qualities that now resonate in the Quad Cities system. Employees feel they control their own destiny, which gives them the confidence that quality service and attention to detail will enable them to beat the competition.

Over lunch at a colorful local watering hole with the system's senior manager of sales and marketing, Greg Evans, and business operations manager Cari Fenzel, Westerman's phone rings. He looks at the cell phone and smiles. "Another sale," he beams, explaining that every time a commissioned sale is made of any Mediacom product, a copy of that sale is sent to Westerman's cell phone. Evans jokes as he arranges his plate before digging in, "Yeah, he likes to hear the cash register go off."

Westerman loves that Mediacom gives local management room to be innovative. He offers as evidence two initiatives that were incubated in his system and later rolled out on a companywide basis.

The first was a retail push, in which a liaison was hired to build relationships with local retailers and roll out a commission schedule. Key retail employees receive a discount so they can actually use what they sell.