Cable Days

Cable Positive chief Steve Villano was right. At a time when the market is dropping hundreds of points, Denver’s Cable Positive Chapter brought in more than $144K Wed night with its 14th Positively Cable review, which was sold out at The Cable Center. The money raised was its second-largest total since its ’95 inception; the chapter has brought in more than $1mln since it started, Villano said after Wed-night’s performance. The themes of the Greek tragedy style show were obvious: Kevin Martin‘s disdain of cable (during the show Martin’s face was plastered on a toilet bowl), Project Canoe, the silent battle between CTAM, NAMIC and WICT for proper positioning during the upcoming Cable Connection weeks ("525,600 Meetings" sung to "Seasons of Love" from the musical "Rent"). But the night’s hit came at the end, when a slew of male cable employees appeared on stage in drag, led by The Sportsman Channel‘s Eric Claytor and Chris Ozminkowski. — Perhaps buoyed by the upcoming final WICT gala in DC next month, WICT’s team pulled away late in the 2nd annua l Cable Center Smackdown cable trivia contest Wed with 999 points, besting Cable Positive‘s 800, CTAM‘s 450 and NAMIC‘s 350. Teams battled with the tough questions, with more guessing than absolute knowledge, despite the presence of our Paul Maxwell on the CTAM squad. How tough were the questions? How many cable ops were there last year? 5891, 2546, 1212, or 1970? What does high band do? Who was the host of the last Cable Ace Awards? Kennedy, Craig Kilborn, Stacey and Clinton, or Hannah Montana? (Answers at Cable360.net/blog). Lynch Cable Resources ‘ Jim Honiotes got the game off to a great start as emcee when he introduced Maxwell as "Cable’s Methusaleh," and coaches Greg Liptak and Les Read as Moses and God, respectively. — The real winner was The Cable Center, which has added a slew of interactive screens and signs to its many exhibits, including a new display about cable programming that features logos of many programmers and an obviously brand-new sign saluting cable’s prime time Emmy winners. An obvious big hit is the new huge tower of screens from Comcast. The MSO made sure that all are HD. The tower was used effectively as a real-time scoreboard for the Smackdown.