Cable Marketers Strut at CTAM’s Final Digital & Broadband Conference

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Cable Marketers Strut at CTAM’s Final Digital & Broadband Conference

by Brian Stevenson ([email protected])

March 17th, 2004 Issue

Marketing was the dominant subject, especially in the context of VOD (Video On Demand), PVR (Personal Video Recorders) and HDTV (High Definition Television) at the annual CTAM Digital & Broadband conference in Los Angeles. In particular, marketing executives expressed a desire to re-evaluate their current message to the consumer and to redefine how the consumer thinks about and how they watch television.

They also want challenging messages that will not only educate the consumer about these value-added vehicles of VOD, PVR and HDTV, but also to use these services to recapture subscribers they lost to Satellite. Using these services to effectively increase market share was a constant theme among cable marketers and other veteran cable professionals at this cable marketing conference. The main goal of these cable marketers is to convince customers that they do a better job and provide a better value, as compared to satellite, when it comes to providing these advanced services.

One of the common elements that tie the aforementioned services together is the User Interface (commonly referred to as an Interactive Program Guide [IPG]). CTAM has organized an On Demand Consortium that deals with IPG user interfaces and metrics/data reporting. One panel discussed how focus groups had been conducted to help determine IPG requirements. The common message from consumers was they wanted peace of mind when using a navigator (make it simple). Some of the results from this consortium were released this week and are available at:
http://www.ctam.com/news/releases/standards.pdf. This is definitely worth a read for anyone with a slight interest in the requirements of the television User Interface.

Other topics of interest included Insight Communications use of on-demand services to reduce churn by up to 60%. Similarly, Internet Telephony was a topic of conversation. It is clear that cable executives like this new service and will be launching it, but they do face challenges as far as the specifics of how it is bundled with their offerings. The cable community also realizes that wireless is lingering in the background as a threat and opportunity and that it will have to be woven into their bundled service offering.

This is the swan song for the CTAM Digital and Broadband Conference. Beginning this year, the specialized topics found in this conference will be integrated into the CTAM Summit (Boston, July 18-20th 2004).

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