Friday, August 06, 2004
As a Cable Industry Person, This One Hurt!
Before founding Worker Bees, I spent seven years marketing in the cable industry. I was all about buzz words such as: "voice, video and data", "broadband", "convergence" and the like. And I still do consulting work for my good cable friends.
Cable has all the ingredients to dominate the deliver of voice, video and data services into your home. They've got ubiquity; they've got the fat pipe; they've got that pipe going in both directions for two-way interactivity; they've got cash-flow; they've got the conservative financial approach...which is really just code for saying they like to squeeze their vendors and haven't often gone in for huge consumer marketing efforts.
But despite all these advantages, they face major competition. And if you're talking about video service into the home, with no fancy stuff added, cable is fighting a losing battle against satellite.
So, there I sat yesterday, getting my nails done, and the TV in the corner was on the soaps. Now, if something reaches the soaps, it is MAINSTREAM thinking.
One character isn't sure he wants to stay with the other, so he asks "do you have cable?" And the response?
"We got better than cable; we've got satellite! 700 channels of everything you could want and crystal clear picture!"
On a soap!
I felt bad for my cable buddies right then.
Cable has all the ingredients to dominate the deliver of voice, video and data services into your home. They've got ubiquity; they've got the fat pipe; they've got that pipe going in both directions for two-way interactivity; they've got cash-flow; they've got the conservative financial approach...which is really just code for saying they like to squeeze their vendors and haven't often gone in for huge consumer marketing efforts.
But despite all these advantages, they face major competition. And if you're talking about video service into the home, with no fancy stuff added, cable is fighting a losing battle against satellite.
So, there I sat yesterday, getting my nails done, and the TV in the corner was on the soaps. Now, if something reaches the soaps, it is MAINSTREAM thinking.
One character isn't sure he wants to stay with the other, so he asks "do you have cable?" And the response?
"We got better than cable; we've got satellite! 700 channels of everything you could want and crystal clear picture!"
On a soap!
I felt bad for my cable buddies right then.
// posted by ElisaC @ 5:23 PM 
