EDletter

Ed Breen left the cable industry a year and a half ago, but he still wants to be a part of it. That’s one of the reasons the former Motorola Broadband president traveled to Denver last month to attend the Cable Center’s annual Hall of Fame dinner. Even though he now works for the non-cable Tyco – Which is based half a country away from the Cable Center, in New Jersey – Breen attended the event to see old friends, honor cable’s original cowboys and get advice on how to steer Tyco through its accounting mess ("You can’t go wrong if you keep your integrity," one cable exec told Breen before the dinner). This kind of scene is unique to cable. Executives tend to fall in love with the industry and rarely look to leave it. Those who do, like Breen, still keep a connection to cable. And many of them actively look to get back into the business. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Breen running an MSO in the next few years. While I’ve been involved with the industry for more than 10 years (in 1993, Harry Jessell hired me as a freelancer to cover an industry-related Capitol Hill hearing for Broadcasting & Cable magazine), I still feel like a cable industry neophyte. Many executives have spent much more time in this industry. Which is why we decided to relaunch CableFAX’s CableWORLD magazine with changes that highlight what’s important to executives in this industry and what makes it fun for them. The changes start with our cover, which will focus more on the personalities and ideas that fuel industry chatter. This issue sports the well-respected Joe Rooney, Cox’s SVP of marketing-a mug that will be recognized by anyone who’s attended an industry gathering. We also are rolling out our "A Day in the Life…" feature, which is designed to show sides of cable executives that aren’t usually found in trade magazines. Can Food Network president Judy Girard cook? Does Outdoor Channel’s Andy Dale really know how to catch fish? Did you know that C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb has visited every the gravesite for every U.S. president? Here’s where you’ll go to find out. We’re starting a Q&A patterned after CableFAX Daily’s "5 Questions" feature. We are introducing more photographs. We are running interesting items that put yesterday’s news in context. We will tap into the part of the industry that makes Ed Breen fly from New Jersey to Denver to attend a Hall of Fame dinner. We will be a serious read, with hard-hitting features (like the one detailing EchoStar’s legal battles in the international programming business). But, like the industry itself, we will be fun as well. We are keeping the bulk of CableWORLD’s excellent editorial staff, already the best in the business: Steve Goldstein, Shirley Brady, Andrea Figler, K.C. Neel and Mavis Scanlon. And the industry’s 30-year vet Paul Maxwell will be a main contributor(check page 42). Overseeing these changes is a new production team led by senior art director Mark Cavich, the man responsible for making CableFAX magazine look so good. Mark hired Southampton Institute of England graduate Vince Lim as graphic designer and brought Lauren McGlynn on board as junior graphic designer. McGlynn is a cum laude graduate of Syracuse’s Newhouse School, which is near and dear to several industry bigwigs. (Isn’t it Bob? Fred?)