(Washington, DC) At a briefing for reporters and analysts at its headquarters today, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) unveiled a new multimedia, and purportedly multimillion dollar, ad campaign aimed at burnishing the industry’s image as a high-tech leader. (A replay of the briefing, as well as TV spots generated by the campaign can be found here.)
The campaign, which is really designed to sway the hearts and minds of federal lawmakers and policy-types, kicks off with a patriotic tag line: “Cable: A Great American Success Story.” Featured in the campaign are some pretty well-done TV and print ads — cable’s marketing group, CTAM, honcho’ed the creative side of the campaign — as well as, and I kid you not, a “diorama” at Washington’s Reagan National Airport.
NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow explained that cable hasn’t been getting the credit it deserves for ushering in a new era of television and Internet innovation. “I think we should be shouting from the rooftops,” he said. “It was obvious to me from my interactions with policy makers that they didn’t know the whole [cable] story.”
For example, the incumbent telcos (particularly Verizon) have made much hay out of their fiber-based network rebuilds, when, in fact, cable has been building fiber-coax networks for years. “They [the telcos] act as if this is the first time someone has put fiber into the ground.”
In terms of 2006 legislative activities, McSlarrow paid homage to Congressional leaders for “grappling with a lot of complex issues in terms of a Telecom Act rewrite.” Still, from the sounds of it, cable is merely resigned to the reality of telecom reform legislation and would probably prefer the whole mess go away.
“We agree that it’s appropriate to look at a law that was passed ten years ago,” McSlarrow said. “We just want to be careful.”
Bottom-line, though, is that cable is quite happy with the way things are now. “Our conclusion is that the 96 Act, with respect to cable, got it right.”
While cable has a finger in every communications pie, two issues raised by the rewrite strike at the heart of the industry. The first is video franchising. McSlarrow said that “cable has played by the rules” and now it’s time for the telcos to do the same thing.
He raised the idea that telcos should be subject to a “shot clock” in terms of gaining local video franchises. The shot clock would give the telcos some period of time, for example 30 days, in which to negotiate a better franchise than the incumbent cable operator has. If by the end of the time period the telco can’t get a better deal, it has to abide by the same terms and conditions as the incumbent operator.
If that doesn’t fly, McSlarrow said, cable operators should be able to get the same franchise terms and conditions as any telco offering video services.
The other big issue, of course, is network neutrality. McSlarrow said that net neutrality is a moving target. “Two years ago it meant you will block a web site.” Now, “the debate has shifted to a different terrain” with net neutrality advocates changing the definitions of what net neturality laws would cover.
Whatever net neutrality is, “this is not the time to pass a law, a rule that would chill [network] innovation,” McSlarrow said. “We should be focused on tomorrow. We don’t know what the network architecture will look like tomorrow.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 4:05 PM|Comments(1)
Just an FYI.
Free Press is organizing its 220,000 activists in a letter writing campaign to pressure the CEOs of the most rapacious telephone and cable companies to keep their hands off our Internet. They're also sending letters to Congress to to ensure that they put enforceable network neutrality principles into our telecommunications laws and regulations.
More at www.freepress.net/deadend.
Tim Karr
MediaCitizen
Posted by: Timothy Karr at January 31, 2006 6:37 AM
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