Cable Show 2009: Cable: We Will Take More Ethnic Share
Opportunities Exist To Make Up Ground On Satellite Providers
Alex Weprin (Broadcasting & Cable) -- Multichannel News, 4/2/2009 10:13:04 AM
Complete Cable Show 2009 coverage from Multichannel News
It's time for cable TV to take back the ethnic market.
That was the message from a group of panelists at a breakfast hosted by B&C and Multichannel News called "Multicultural TV: Is It Cable's Competitive Edge?"
For too long, the satellite industry has been far more successful at attracting ethnic audiences, in part because cable simply hasn't realized the growth potential in those markets.
On the panel, Glenn Goldsmith of Mediacom, David Jensen of Comcast, Tony Maldonado of Cox, Bryan McGuirk of SES Americom and Otton Padrón of Univision discussed what cable can do to take back market share.
"Let's be honest, the satellite guys have owned this space. For 10 years, they have been beating cable by a more than two to one margin in the competition for the ethnic subscriber," said Jensen, vice president for content acquisition at Comcast.
But now, Jensen said with more new channels and a renewed effort to market toward the multicultural markets, "we have a perfect opportunity to level the playing field with the satellite guys and really to take back the ethnic segment for the first time."
Simply offering a lower price for a package of ethnic channels won't guarantee customers, said Maldonado, vice president for acquisition marketing and sciences at Cox Communications. "I would differentiate between price and value," he said.
Quality matters, and to grow the ethnic market in the long-term, cable operators and programmers need to make sure the underlying business model for new services work, Maldonado said.
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