Technology: Comcast looks beyond Disney

Chief Executive, The, May, 2004 by Jon Chesto

CONTRARY TO popular wisdom, Comcast's attempted merger with Disney isn't the chief concern of CEO Brian Roberts. The head of the nation's largest cable company faces a more crucial mission: fending off the challenge of satellite TV.

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Comcast's future relies less on the legacy of Mickey Mouse and more on the potential benefits of two-way communications that can be offered through a digital cable network. That potential is what lured Bill Gates to invest $1 billion in Comcast seven years ago, Roberts said at a recent luncheon with local executives in Boston. Such benefits, he hastened to add, aren't available from a satellite dish.

Roberts' strategy for competing with satellite broadcasting includes upgrading Comcast's high-speed Internet service and a plan to offer TiVo-style video recording technology on its cable boxes by year's end. Comcast also recently began offering video on demand, with instant access to a library of 2,000 hours of programming.

Perhaps the biggest changes will follow Comcast's entry into the growing crowd of phone providers that use Internet technology to carry their calls, known as Voice over Internet Protocol. After some regional trials, Comcast will launch its Internet phone service next year in all of its markets through existing cable lines. Roberts sees this as a way to eventually offer an array of new products that satellite broadcasting companies cannot, possibly including video phones and voice-activated remote controls.

At the same time, Roberts still seeks to expand Comcast's content holdings. That's how Disney, with its stable of TV networks and movie studios, landed in his sights. But for now, at least, he's unwilling to sweeten Comcast's $54 billion bid for Disney. Roberts says he remains hopeful a deal can be done, but he won't wait forever.

"Whether it's Disney or whomever, I believe five years from now, Comcast will be a very different company than we are today," Roberts says. And, he adds, "television is going to change--as much as it has ever changed."