Recession, What Recession?
Well, it’s not be an official recession (yet), but the economic news here in the USA is not so good. Ask anyone.Watch the presidential "road to the White House" (to tout our friends at C-SPAN).Listen at the water cooler (for those of you who have jobs).Watch the startling growth of numbers representing how much you’re paying for gas as the meager gallons land in your tank at your local "service station" (ah, they once really were… I grew up in Texas in the era of 10c a gallon gas wars with free giveaways).Meanwhile, cable has long had a reputation as "recession proof."That might not be quite right, but as Comcast’s Steve Burke mentioned during the opening panel of Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia last week, it is "recession resistant." And cable is showing some basic subscriber growth (again; after a long drought) but is feeling that the nation’s economic woes are not going to disappear until, maybe, after next year. Though Steve, like us all, hopes for a nice surprise on the upside. Charter’s Neil Smit echoed Steve while noting that, even in the face of growing foreclosures and underwater mortgages, things were still doing OK.As Showtime’s Matt Blank noted, despite having a great year riding on a wave of truly original series, he worries a bit, as a premium network, about how hard it is to get to the economic level of being able to subscribe to a premium net… $60+ often.And, in his first appearance at a cable show (even though he ran Motorola for awhile), Nortel’s Mike Zafirovsky (Mike Z to friends) suggested we all might better worry a bit about inflation.All, though, were bullish about cable’s infrastructure advantage (mostly, but not quite all, in place) over the other players in the various business spaces of video, voice and data…And wireless is on the way via Wi-Max or LTE or something… and Mike Z was just back from a Seattle visit with Clearwire… with some rollout in—Burke hopes—18 to 24 months.Stay tuned.Random Notes:* Tallest Building in Philadelphia? Easy. And nice. More height per floor. Spacious feeling. Classy. With a two-story—and very nice—Ralph’s Cafe. And the biggest, sharpest, coolest video wall you’ve ever seen in the entrance. Complete with it’s own regional train station (in the basement, not on the top floor). After the opening panel at Cable-Tec Expo last week, Steve Burke took me, Neil Smit and Matt Blank (who had already been on tour with Brian Roberts before) for a look at the new Comcast Center. Impressive without being ostentatious. Kind of went with the hat I found in my hotel room from Comcast Networks’ Mark O’Connell that says: WWRD. That stands for "What Would Ralph Do?" Kind of the guiding light around there.*http://www.cablefaxcontentbusiness.com/:Check out a free trial subscription… the overworked Mike Grebb and Seth Arenstein have created an interesting Web site tracking all sorts of content related issues… mostly for those of us too lazy to do so ourselves. Included (soon) will be some programming tracking charts from The BRIDGE Data Group joining Rentrak, Nielsen and others. This is one of the few independent places you can get real data. And it isn’t just some "smart" aggregation; it is a focused presentation of what you need to know about programming in cable.www.cablefaxcontentbusiness.com/:
