NCTA Wrap-Up: A reporter's notebook

There is a level of dynamism to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's annual show that the telephone side of the telecom industry should note. The National Show, as it's called, features some of the most energetic general sessions I have witnessed, as top cable execs agree to participate in lively panel discussions with a variety of "outsiders"--executives from the regulatory field, entertainment, computing, online content, the telephone industry and more--that explore relevant issues and go beyond the traditional "Isn't this a great time for our industry" fare.

One reason for the energy level, I believe, is that top cable executives not only attend the show but participate--they appear on panels but they also show up to listen to other people talk and can be seen in the convention center hallways and on the exhibit floor.

Repeatedly, over the course of the two-day event, executive panelists would reference something they heard in a previous panel. Their obvious interest lent a level of credibility to all the proceedings--and I think it also accounts for the stellar list of speaking participants.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the panels were all moderated by well-known TV news people, from CNBC's Ron Insana to Fox News' Stuart Varney.

Insana's kickoff general session included Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Wang, Electronic Arts exec Bing Gordon and Cablevision Systems COO Tom Rutledge. Insana drew the first laugh by saying he would refer to the billionaire panelists as 'Mr.' and to the others by their first name.

"Let's start with you, Mr. Allen," Insana deadpanned.

The cable newsman was quickly upstaged, however, when he prefaced his first question to "Bing" with a rambling preamble concerning the relationship of cable to his video game industry.

Video game enthusiasts prefer their questions in short sentences, Gordon responded.

"So I'm assuming you just asked me 'What's up with video games?'" he said, to the crowd's great amusement.

A Lot of Love: This year's National Show featured a tremendous amount of sucking up to cable. From Wang on the opening panel through almost to the end, when Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser and Sprint COO Len Lauer were practically begging to partner with cable, the "guest" panelists went out of their way to say that cable is the predominant broadband play in the U.S. and the partner of choice. Google co-founder Larry Page endeared himself to the audience by saying he has just switched from DSL to cable modem and found it a big improvement.

I missed the only panel that was the exception to this rule in order to catch a flight home. RelevantC General Partner William Markey tells me, however, that the closing panel, which featured executives from Disney, NBC and News Corp. reminded cable that its video on demand plans are no boon to the content creators and if anything will undermine their current cash cow--the DVD market.

Headroom: Allen, the chairman of Vulcan, was the first to remind the crowd that cable networks "have a lot of headroom" and can add bandwidth to support future applications without a massive capital expense. Comcast's Brian Roberts took up the rallying cry a day later, pointing out that cable uses 6 MHz of its 750 MHz capacity to provide data service today and could easily convert more of the analog TV bandwidth to digital services.

"CableLabs has been showing 200 megabits per second, and we know that a billion bits per second is doable," he said.

Roberts' company is under fire, however, for eliminating FM radio from its cable broadcast package in the California counties of Marin and Sonoma. The company replaced the FM broadcasts with high-definition TV and video-on-demand service. A company spokesman said the decision was based on user surveys in which FM radio was the least popular service. Several dozen protesters picketed The National Show's opening general session on Sunday, to decry the FM blackout and what they called union-busting tactics by Comcast.

Marin County supervisors have passed a resolution urging Comcast to restore FM radio service.