World Wide: ICN Wants in on Comcast Portal

International Channel Networks incoming chief Steve Smith has designs on parent company Comcast’s Internet portal and will be meeting with its managers soon. "Our eyes are on it big time,"Smith says. "Our customers, particularly South Asians…are very Internet savvy…so we think the portal is a very good place for us to get real estate and deliver programming." Smith sees Japanese anime and pop music shows as the 1st IC items to go on the portal. IC Channel is in the process of adding more English-language Asian shows to its lineup to target second- and third-generation Asian Americans (Cfax, 09/20). "Right now we’re creating a Japanese pop music show, a Korean pop music show and a more broad Asian pop music show; these music-video shows are perfect since in a PC environment people are looking for more short-form content; eventually we’d post some half-hour dramas." IC Networks’ biggest challenge dovetails somewhat with Diversity Week. "Educating the cable industry about how important ethnic content is to their product offerings" is ICN’s top hurdle. "It’s not a secret the cable industry has been hemorrhaging subscribers to satellite; one of the reasons is that satellite providers have been more aggressive in offering international content. In a lot of markets those running the cable systems don’t see the fact that they have a huge potential customer out there who wants a basic cable package, high speed Internet, VoIP options and some ethnic content…It’s been a bit of a struggle for us to get the system-level guys…to understand it’s important to their business…With a cable sub valued at $3500 per, [it hurts] every time [cable] loses an ethnic customer to satellite." But things are improving. "The main reason Comcast acquired us is that they totally get it."