SAN FRANCISCO--Cable companies get a lot of criticism from the Silicon Valley set for being some of the ultimate 20th century corporate dinosaurs. Or, as Web 2.0 Summit conference organizer John Battelle put it, "a dead duck."
So the head of Comcast, a company that's taken loads of heat from tech experts--for imposing bandwidth caps, poor customer service, and an alleged failure to innovate on both broadband speeds and the convergence between television and the Web--was an interesting choice to kick off the summit event here on Tuesday. But Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spun his company to the audience as springing from the same kind of entrepreneurial spirit that the Bay Area prides itself on.
He spoke of how he took over the reins of the company from his father, who according to legend was able to make an early strategic acquisition thanks to the winnings from a Tupelo, Miss., poker game the night before. "Similar to probably almost everyone in this room, (he) wanted to work for himself, wanted to start his own business."
He previewed new features for the Comcast video hub Fancast, which it launched slightly under two years ago at the Consumer Electronics Show. The new beta of Fancast, which will launch by year's end, will make new on-demand content available online, much of it unavailable in outlets like iTunes--and integrated with DVR boxes--to Comcast cable subscribers who already pay for HBO. About two dozen content providers have signed on board, and as Roberts scrolled through the preview, he noted that there were about a thousand movies available.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts
(Credit: Comcast)Battelle, interviewing Roberts onstage, called it "video-on-demand on steroids."
The Associated Press, referencing a briefing this week with executives at Comcast's Philadelphia headquarters, helped fill in some of the details about the service, noting that it would include such popular cable shows as HBO's "Entourage" and AMC's "Mad Men" and for now is being called "On Demand Online."
The AP said Comcast subscribers can initially watch shows and movies only on their home computers after being verified by the cable system. Online viewing, at least in the beginning, will be restricted to those who get Internet service through Comcast, not through competitors like phone companies, the AP said.
Back at Web 2.0 Summit, Roberts also said that Comcast investments in broadband technology are, in part, what has facilitated the explosion in Web innovation.
"We're going to keep investing, because we believe there are great ideas in this room and in this country and in the world," Roberts said. "In the same way, it's unthinkable that a Google or a Yahoo or a Facebook or a Twitter would be happening if we hadn't made those investments (in broadband infrastructure) 15 years ago."
Battelle asked Roberts why he believes the U.S. lags behind in broadband technology advancements. Roberts replied, "I think that that's just not true."
(The audience laughed uncomfortably.)
"We have the same equipment (as other countries), the same wires, the same infrastructure, why is the adoption different is a different question. It's not the availability and I don't think it's the lack of speed," he continued. "You get to digital literacy, you get to what language it's in, do you have the right PC or a PC at all...I don't believe the infrastructure providers haven't done enough."
As for Net neutrality, an issue where Comcast has been a frequent villain after imposing bandwidth caps and interfering with peer-to-peer file-sharing software, Roberts was vague.
"We welcome that discussion, that scrutiny, and we're going to be an active participant," he said. "The few limited examples, including our own, that have gotten notoriety usually get dealt with in ten seconds, and changes get made, because this is new technology."
More recently, it's bubbled into the press that Comcast is in talks with General Electric to obtain a controlling stake in its NBC Universal property. Conveniently, GE chief Jeffrey Immelt was slated to speak later in the afternoon at Web 2.0 Summit.
"You and Jeff Immelt must have finished the NBC deal back in the green room," Battelle joked.
Roberts replied facetiously, "It's all done."
Wow. With all the drama and in-fighting among cable companies, TV content creators, and Web video companies this week, you'd think the whole industry was one big junior-high cafeteria. Oh, wait, it kind of is.
First, Hulu--a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.--pulled its content from TV.com (which is owned by CBS, publisher of CNET News). Then it did the same with Boxee, a company that makes software designed for watching online video on TVs via set-top boxes. The reason for these measures appears to be either mounting pressure from the TV content owners that have licensed their video to Hulu, or mounting pressure from the cable companies, or both, or something like that.
Now, we've got a report in The Wall Street Journal indicating that cable giants Time Warner Cable and Comcast are in talks with some of the companies that operate pay-cable channels, for a plan to make some of the networks' content available online to subscribers. It'd probably be on a streaming, ad-supported basis, and probably available for free to existing subscribers.
I've been watching all this with quite a bit of curiosity and amusement. You see, I canceled my cable subscription and ditched my TV a few months ago, and have since been relying on a combination of Netflix (which may offer a streaming-only option as early as next year), iTunes, Hulu, and randomly dropping in on friends' apartments if I really, really want to watch something live. If I show up with a pizza and a nice friendly smile, most of them are OK with it.
In this Digital Age, cable subscriptions just seem a bit convoluted to me; no offense to the people who run the Game Show Channel or Boomerang, but those aren't my cup of tea and I'd prefer to not have to pay for them.
If this shadowy, in-the-works cable deal involves any kind of Web-only cable subscription where, say, you can pay by the stream or by the channel, I'd be all for it. And if the content providers finally work things out with the set-top box makers and Web video hubs, it could be terrific for me and other people who've gotten totally fed up with Stone Age TV offerings. For now, however, it's just a dramatic mess and recent signs are indicating that it's taking steps backward as opposed to forward.
Consequently, I'm riding out the storm for now. I'm holding off on purchasing any kind of set-top box--or a television, for that matter--until the future-of-television compass stops wildly spinning. In a few years, I'm sure, the solution to it all will seem like it should've been obvious the whole time.
Isn't that always how these things are?
Current Media, the youth-oriented cable channel founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, has filed for a $100 million initial public offering.
The company aims to trade under the Nasdaq symbol CRTM; neither share prices nor number of shares have been disclosed.
Acknowledging that it has "a history of losses," relies on an "unproven media model," and had an accumulated deficit of $31.9 million at the end of 2007, Current Media is nevertheless pushing forward in the hopes that it will be able to better cover expenses as a public company. Revenues for 2007 were $63.7 million.
Current.com, relaunched in October 2007.
(Credit: current.com)According to Current Media's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the network reaches 51 million households in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Founded in 2005, when Gore and Hyatt purchased the News World International channel for $70.9 million, the Current TV network focuses on "independent" news coverage and documentary programming, much of which is submitted in 3- to 7-minute "pods" created by viewers.
Current also operates the Current.com site, which it relaunched last October, where all of the "pods" are available for streaming on-demand along with Digg-style social-news content. One of Current Media's stated goals is to better monetize the site, as well as to expand to "new platforms" (read: mobile) and more international regions.
Current Media's underwriters, as disclosed in the SEC filing, are Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase, and Pacific Crest Securities.
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