Private Business

Either Wall St has to change the way it looks at the industry, or more cable companies will be going private. That was the prevailing view at a Cable Center panel on "The Rise of the Cable Industry and Its Future" Tues in Denver. "There’s a silly preoccupation with the status of basic subscribers," said Comcast dir Julian Brodsky. "In the cable business, the success of telephony will dwarf the basic fact of whether subs are up or down." Brodsky complained that Wall St’s reaction of punishing cable stocks when basic subs fall slightly is one of the reasons MSOs like Cox have gone private-a sentiment echoed by Daniels’ Brian Deevy. Myhren Media’s Trygve Myhren chimed in: "If you throw Sarbanes- Oxley on top of that, then going private is appealing."