'Cable' Brand And Image Weighing Cable Down, NCTA Chief Powell Says at INTX

CHICAGO -- The cable industry needs an image change that better reflects its importance to the era of Internet innovation, said NCTA CEO Michael Powell Tuesday at the kickoff general session of INTX 2015, the first year of NCTA's rebranded cable show. Powell said of the word "cable," "I hate the name." Innovations in online video and the IoT and nearly all new Internet technology depend on cable's infrastructure to exist, said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who demo'd new customer service, voice control and connected home technology at the INTX session as expected (see 1505040059).

Roberts attacked the term "over-the-top." It's "not over the top of anything, it's right through our broadband," Roberts said. "It is time for our industry to look beyond its traditional bounds and its traditional players," Powell said.

Powell conceded that cable has an important history, but said the term is weighing the industry down. After his speech, cable attorneys told us they agreed cable didn't get enough credit for its role in Internet advancement, but they didn't agree with a name change. Because cable carriers are entrepreneurs, they're used to dealing with industry disruption, said a lawyer. The challenges posed by online video competitors and the changing business model aren't substantively different from the previous challenges the industry has faced and overcome, said the attorney.

Powell and Roberts alluded to cable's customer service problems. Powell seemed to blame that image in part for the defeat of Comcast/Time Warner Cable and the approval of the FCC's net neutrality order. As long as cable has a "frayed" relationship with its customers, policy battles will go against it, Powell said. "I think this industry is highly conscious of that problem."

Roberts unveiled new technology designed to improve Comcast's troubled customer service, problems that were repeatedly highlighted over the last year by deal opponents. By the end of the year, Comcast customers will be able to track their cable service technicians using a smartphone and rate the tech's performance. "We want to make customer service our next priority," Roberts said. Low ratings will lead to follow-up customer service calls. Customers will also be able to schedule customer service calls, which will prevent long hold times, Roberts said.

Roberts showed a new voice controlled remote for Comcast's X1 DVR platform. Roberts used the remote to search for a specific scene in the film Forrest Gump, then the name of a song playing in the background of that scene, and biographical information about actor Tom Hanks, all through simple, casually worded voice commands. As a joke, Roberts asked the X1 system about Comcast/TWC, and the machine responded by showing a scene of a violent explosion from the latest Fast and the Furious film. "That pretty much sums it up," he said. "Now, we should really move on." Roberts didn't reference the deal again. The remote will be free to all X1 customers, he said.

Former News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin said he saw tremendous competition for distribution in the industry's future, and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said the same, saying the war for distribution would lead to roughly seven or so companies surviving. Customers won't want to go to too many different sources for their data needs and to watch content, Armstrong said, and that will lead to consolidation. Armstrong compared the current situation to the beginning of the Internet's popularity, saying cable and video may have reached a similar point where everything will change.

Only the strongest, most coherent brands will be able to survive "the explosion of opportunities" and the changing video business model, Chernin said. Brands like ESPN are associated with one type of content and will survive, while brands that are more amorphous and aggregate several types of content could be in trouble, Chernin said. On-demand video streaming has made customers used to being their own content aggregators, Chernin said.