CableFAX Webinar:

Personalized Certificate for all Attendees

Bryan Burns
VP, Strategic Business Planning & Development
ESPN

Bryan Burns was named vice president, strategic business planning and development in April 2000. With ESPN since 1996, he most recently served as vice president, distribution development.

Burns currently serves as the head of the company¹s high-definition services, ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD. Burns has been an integral part of creation of the two services from the business planning prior to the announcement of ESPN HD in 2002 to the flip of the switch of ESPN2 HD in January 2005. Burns is also charged with directing the growth of high definition telecasts within ABC Sports programming.

During his time with ESPN, Burns has been responsible for the conception of a wide variety of ESPN¹s video products, including ESPN Game Plan, the company¹s pay per view product for college football, ESPN FULL COURT for college basketball, and MLS/ESPN Shootout for Major League Soccer. He also designed ESPN Today, ESPN NOW and ESPN EXTRA, video and interactive channels that are designed for digital cable and the expanded capacity of Direct Broadcast Satellite carriers. Burns also was responsible for ESPN¹s special markets efforts to non-residential distributors such as commercial establishments and hotels plus the company¹s overall relationships with DIRECTV and Echostar.

Burns came to ESPN from The Paragon Alliance, a consulting firm he founded in 1992, after sixteen years in professional sports team management. His 16-year Major League Baseball career included seven years as Senior Vice President of MLB, where his responsibilities included handling worldwide television operations and overseeing special events such as the World Series, League Championship Series, and the All Star Game. Burns also served as Director of Marketing and Broadcasting for the Kansas City Royals from 1974-1983. At Comsat Video Enterprises from 1990-1992, Burns oversaw negotiations for the major sporting and special events included in the company¹s Satellite Cinema and On Command Video pay-per-view services.

Burns has been recognized three times by CableFAX as one of the CableFAX 100, profiling ³cable¹s 100 heavy hitters.² In 2004, Burns was inducted into the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers (DTV Academy), a select group of individuals who have made a significant contribution to the development, success and promotion of digital television.

Burns is a graduate of Central Missouri State University, where he received a bachelor of science in Communications.

Mark Schaffer
Director, Business Management
Motorola, Inc.

John Honeycutt
EVP/Chief Media Technology Officer
Discovery Communications

John Honeycutt is responsible for Discovery’s global strategic media technology planning and governance, and for international broadcast operations across the company. In this role, Honeycutt identifies and implements future media technology trends, including HD and 3D. In addition, Honeycutt is charged with identifying and implementing operational efficiencies for Discovery, including the company’s global digitization initiative to migrate from a single-thread, linear content creation and distribution environment to a multi-channel, non-linear, file-based process.

Honeycutt directed the design and launch of the Discovery Television and Technology Center in Sterling, Va., a state-of-the-art facility that provides origination of Discovery’s 13 U.S. networks, as well as BBC America.  He also oversees Discovery’s network origination and in-house production centers located in Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and London, which provide post-production and creative services to Discovery’s worldwide businesses.

In April 2009, Honeycutt was a recipient of Broadcasting & Cable’s 12th Annual Technology Leadership Awards.

Prior to joining Discovery in 2003, Honeycutt served as senior vice president of broadcast operations for Fox Cable Networks in Los Angeles. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Fitchburg State College.

David Broberg
Vice President of Consumer Video Technology
CableLabs Office of the CTO

Mr. Broberg has been with CableLabs since 1999 and was a principal developer of the OpenCable™ hardware architecture. As a member of the Office of the CTO, he is currently responsible for identifying, analyzing and developing key strategic video technology and related specifications and standards. Mr. Broberg has more than 30 years of technical and business experience in the television industry including broadcast, cable, satellite and consumer electronics and holds four awarded patents in the field. Prior to joining CableLabs, Mr. Broberg served in several key strategic engineering management and product development roles for Mitsubishi Electric including digital broadcasting and consumer electronics. Mr. Broberg is a member of the SMPTE Task Force on 3D, the CEA 3D Task Force and chairs the SCTE Digital Video Subcommittee 3D Ad Hoc Group. Mr. Broberg is a Sr. Member of IEEE and a veteran of the US Air Force where he began his career in video technology and obtained an Associate in Applied Arts & Sciences, Electronic Technology from Mountain View College in 1980. As a hobby, Mr. Broberg began taking 3D photographs in 1976 and currently has twinned digital still cameras that can produce high-resolution digital 3D photographs and 3D video.