Autumn Breeze: Summit to Become a Fall Conference in 2010

Today’s CTAM Summit won’t be the last you have to plan your summer vacation around, but the clock’s ticking. Summit will move to the fall in ’10. The move stems from an NCTA exec cmte gathering a few years back that considered killing Summit, CableWorld reports today. Ultimately, the group—Jim Robbins of Cox, Steve Burke of Comcast and Insight’s Michael Willner—suggested folding the highly successful Summit into the National Show, or at least moving it to the same city either just before or just after National. Summit wound up surviving, but the popular spring event CTAM Digital got booted. The move was logical since many of the topics Digital covered became mainstream enough for Summit. Working with CEO feedback and internal mechanisms for monitoring shifting industry values, CTAM’s leaders then sought a new Summit timeslot to create distance from National and turn the marketing confab into an indispensable industry event. In her column in today’s Cfax, CTAM pres/CEO Char Beales confirms Summit will become an autumn affair in ’10. "Our members tell us they like the idea because it would balance cable’s conference calendar in a nicely symmetrical fashion," she writes. In the end, the near killing of Summit may have strengthened CTAM. Beales made a series of trips to brief CEOs about the proposal. "I think when all was said and done, the CEOs came away with a new-found respect for Char," an exec quoted in CableWorld says, "and because of that, I truly think CTAM is as strong as it’s ever been."