Right Here. Right Now: Part 2 Of MCN's 30th Anniversary Special

A Look at Those Shaping Cable and Telecommunications Today

By MCN Staff -- Multichannel News, 11/8/2010 12:01:00 AM

Welcome to the second issue of a three-part series in Multichannel News celebrating 30 years of continuous coverage of the cable-TV industry.

Last week, we put a spotlight on 30 cable legends who made a significant impact on the early history of cable. This week, we’ll highlight leaders who are having an impact on the industry today.

Few other American industries have produced such personalities, some famous (Jon Stewart) and some infamous (Chris Albrecht). Each has played a specific role in transforming cable TV from an antenna service to a provider of voice, video and data on multiple channels and platforms.

This edition also features guest columns from three of the brightest minds in the TV industry on themes central to cable’s success — programming, technology and finance: NBC Universal Cable Entertainment president Bonnie Hammer, former CableLabs CEO Dick Green and InterMedia Partners managing partner Leo J. Hindery Jr.

The stories in this package were reported and written by K.C. Neel. As always, we urge you to share your memories from the past 30 years with us at mcnletters@nbmedia.com.

CHRISTOPHER ALBRECHT

Chris Albrecht is considered one of the entertainment industry’s programming geniuses. Albrecht spent more than 20 years at HBO, where he was chairman and CEO from 2002 to 2007 and was responsible for turning out some of the most notable and critically acclaimed programming on the dial, including The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and Sex and the City.

Albrecht was forced out of HBO in 2007, after he was arrested and charged with roughing up a girlfriend in a Las Vegas parking lot following an Oscar De La Hoya- Floyd Mayweather boxing match televised by the network. That prompted word to leak out that HBO in 1991 paid a settlement of at least $400,000 to a woman who worked for Albrecht and accused him of choking her during a confrontation in her office.

Still, he remained in high demand. It wasn’t long after the scandal in Las Vegas that he announced he was joining talent agency IMG as head of its global media unit. After a falling out with IMG owner Teddy Forstmann, Albrecht joined Starz Entertainment in January of this year as president and CEO, succeeding Bob Clasen, who retired.

In a wide-ranging interview with GQ last month, Albrecht discussed his checkered past that included drugs, alcohol and women. He also talked about how he plans to turn Starz into the next HBO, with original programming. That task won’t be easy, he admitted to the magazine, given the fact that his entire budget is less than the $115 million he spent on HBO’s Band of Brothers a few years back. Still, Albrecht’s reputation for brilliant programming remains intact and many industry players expect great things ahead for Starz.

“It’s a town of second, third and fourth chances,” actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who starred in Sex and the City, told The New York Times in 2007. “I would never be reluctant to work with him again. Maybe I’m being Pollyanna-ish, but people want to work with people who have been successful.”

ROGER AILES

When it comes to political theater, Roger Ailes has few peers. Ailes, who produced Broadway plays and musicals in the 1970s and has served as a political consultant for several Republican candidates for three decades, knows what viewers and consumers want.

As chairman of Fox News and Fox Television Stations, Ailes, a former CNBC president, has built a juggernaut of conservative news coverage with the blessing of his boss Rupert Murdoch, who is also wellknown for his conservative political bent. TV commentators including Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have helped build Fox News Channel into the toprated news network on the dial. The Fox News division is expected to make more than $700 million in operating profit this year, according to The New York Times.

The network’s “Fair and Balanced” tagline has won numerous marketing awards, including a Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing Hall of Fame award in 2008. In a column that ran earlier this year, Howard Fineman of Newsweek called Ailes the de facto chairman of the Republican National Committee for his power over the party and its members.

Ailes may rattle a few cages and ruffle a few feathers — Fox News and the Obama administration threw repeated barbs at each other earlier this year — but he garners respect. “Regardless of whether you like what he is doing, Roger Ailes is one of the most creative talents of his generation, CNN analyst David Gergen told The New York Times in January. “He has built a media empire that is capable of driving the conversation, and, at times, the political process.”

CATHY AVIGIRIS

By the time Comcast rolled out phone services, other companies were much farther along. With Cathy Avgiris at the helm, though, the MSO was quickly able to make up some serious ground. Today, Avgiris serves as senior vice president and general manager for communications and data services and oversees all aspects of Comcast’s high-speed Internet, voice and wireless businesses.

Avgiris was in charge of the MSO’s digital voice business and added the wireless and high-speed data divisions to her stable of responsibilities earlier this year. She has been busy lately launching Comcast’s Internet 2go product, which provides 4G wireless data service.

“Cathy has done a tremendous job growing our voice business and launching our 4G wireless data service,” Comcast Cable executive vice president David Juliano said in March, when Avgiris was promoted. “Under her leadership, Comcast became the third-largest residential phone services provider in the U.S. in less than four years .”

Avgiris joined Comcast in June 1992, as head of what was then its Northeast region. After advancing through various posts in cable operations, she joined the high-speed Internet group in 2000, which had 150,000 subscribers at the time. Following Comcast’s acquisition of AT&T Broadband in 2002, she became senior vice president of fi nance for the newly formed telephony group.

Prior to Comcast, she was vice president and controller for Drexel Industries, a small forklift manufacturer.

“It was really a great training ground for getting into operations,” she told Multichannel News in 2007, when she was named one of that year’s Wonder Women, adding, “Cable is a lot sexier than the forklift business.”

CHAR BEALES

Cable has always been known as having a somewhat collegial environment for sharing best practices and cheering on each company’s efforts. But it took Char Beales and the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing to really bring the industry together for successful collaborative marketing.

Indeed, Beales has been involved in some of the cable industry’s most important and influential programs over the past three decades.

At the National Cable Television Association, she was instrumental in convincing Hollywood that cable programming was worthy of recognition.

At CTAM, she has helped prepare the cable industry for competition with coordinated marketing efforts and programs that individual companies wouldn’t be able to pull off, like the Cable Movers Program, which allowed subscribers who were relocating to sign up for service with the operator in their new neighborhood before moving into their home.

Beales understands the industry and how it works. As a result, CTAM has crafted several successful programs, campaigns and organizations under her watch. She is described by many industry players as tough but congenial, hard-working and open to both sharing and accepting new ideas.

Beales was lured to CTAM in 1992 by Matt Blank, chairman and CEO of Showtime Networks and chairman of CTAM at the time. The organization was suffering from a lack of vision and was almost broke — something Blank conveniently forgot to tell Beales, she told Multichannel News in 2009.

But she was intrigued by the possibilities the organization had and the effect that successful programs could have on the industry. And it’s worked.

Among some of CTAM’s successful efforts under Beales’ watchful eye: the Cable Movers program, the Movies On Demand campaign, a businessservices council and an advanced cable solutions consortium.


CHASE CAREY

After eight years running DirecTV, Chase Carey resigned and returned to News Corp. in June as deputy chairman, president and chief operating officer. He replaced Peter Chernin, who left to produce movies with News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox studio.

At the time of Carey’s return, News chairman Rupert Murdoch called Carey “one of my closest advisers and friends for years,” and noted that he’s “delighted we’ll once again be working together across our businesses as we face the challenges and great opportunities ahead.”

Carey’s tenure at DirecTV was successful. Under his watch, the satellite-TV provider grew from 12 million to 18 million subscribers and free cash flow increased from breakeven in 2003 to $1.7 billion in 2008.

In addition, DirecTV ramped up its high-definition TV offerings and focused on customers with better credit who wouldn’t mind paying more for quality television. Carey also oversaw the turnaround of DirecTV Latin America after bankruptcy, nearly quadrupling its subscriber ranks to 5.8 million.

Before he became DirecTV’s CEO in 2003, Carey had spent 15 years with News Corp. in various senior executive roles, including COO of News Corp. and co-COO of Fox Entertainment.

Carey barely had time to get used to his new/old digs before the imbroglio with Cablevision Systems blew up earlier this month. Carey has long advocated the notion of multichannel providers paying to distribute broadcast stations. Fox successfully completed that deal on Oct. 30, days after it inked a new pact with Dish Network.

JEFF BEWKES

When Jeff Bewkes took over control of Time Warner Inc. as chairman and CEO in 2008, it was like inheriting a cluttered and crumbling old house from a beloved aunt. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Bewkes has worked for Time Warner for over 30 years now.

But remodeling Time Warner’s house was a major undertaking. Within the first year, he consolidated his power base, rejiggered some top management positions, consolidated the movie studios, and spun off both the cable operations and troubled AOL unit.

Bewkes was working at Citibank in 1979 when he left to take a job at Home Box Office. Among his first tasks: sweet-talking hotel chains into subscribing to the fledgling movie service. He quickly rose through the ranks. By 1991, Bewkes was HBO’s president and chief operating offi cer. He became chairman of the entertainment and networks group in 2002 and three years later, he was promoted to Time Warner Inc. president and chief operating offi cer.

Now that Time Warner’s interior is in better working order, Bewkes has been concentrating on other issues, notably TV Everywhere, something he assertively promoted at the National Show in Los Angeles.

He told The New York Times in August 2010 that “people want to use whatever screen they prefer. Some people want a laptop or a tablet, some people want a television, a big TV. They want control over when they watch, what they watch; they want to be able to pull things that they want.”

GLENN BRITT

Glenn Britt isn’t known for passionate outbursts or rash behavior. But people who know him say his quiet demeanor is just what’s needed to run the country’s second-largest cable company.

And while Britt, who serves as chairman, president and CEO of Time Warner Cable, is known for his calm, hushed tone of voice, he can be hard as nails. TWC, where he’s been CEO since 2001, has been involved in its fair share of tussles with programmers over retransmission consent and programming fees.

Britt told Broadcasting & Cable in 2008 that TWC’s board believes those battles to hold down costs are the right thing to do for consumers. “But I think the reality is consumers tend to see everybody involved as [unsympathetic] large companies and a sort of pox on everybody’s house,” he said.

Britt also was instrumental in TWC’s aggressive launches into high speed data, residential telephony and has overseen the MSO’s adoption of new services, including high-definition television and digital video recorders.

Britt has spent his entire professional career at TWC and its predecessors, starting at Time Inc., where he worked in the controller’s department, Time Inc.’s fledgling cable system (then called Manhattan Cable), and HBO. He even spent 18 months in Tehran, Iran, working for Time-Life Books, which was helping the government publish how-to manuals. Britt left the Middle East a year before the overthrow of the shah of Iran, “not because I was smart,” he told Multichannel News in 2006, “but because my contract was up.”

When Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications in 1990, Britt moved over to the combined cable company, where he has stayed for the past two decades. He led it to a successful IPO in 2007.

ROCCO COMMISSO

Rocco Commisso is no stranger to the nuances, headaches and benefi ts of public equity and debt. As CablevisionIndustries’ chief financial officer, he oversaw the first successful offering of public debt by a privately-held cable company.

Commisso, a former banker, formed Mediacom Communications in 1996, after CVI was sold. He took the company public 10 years ago and managed to amass systems counting 1.2 million customers, making Mediacom the seventh- largest U.S. MSO.

But Commisso felt Mediacom’s stock was undervalued and he wanted the freedom to make the long-term decisions that Wall Street too often derides. In May, Commisso tried to buy Mediacom’s outstanding shares — he already owns 40% of the outstanding stock and controls 87% of the votes. However, Commisso was unable to convince the special committee to buy into his proposal and two months later, he pulled the plug on the offer.

Bitterly disappointed, Commisso nevertheless said he isn’t interested in selling off his stake in the company and pledged to forge ahead to make Mediacom more successful.

Commisso is one of the industry’s most colorful and outspoken operators. He is also highly regarded as one of the smartest and principled executives in the business today.

He credits his “Golden Rule” philosophy of living and doing business to his parents, particularly his father, “who had a great sense of right and wrong and who never was afraid to speak his mind when he saw something wrong,” Commisso told Multichannel News in 2009.

JAMES DOLAN

James Dolan may sing the blues with his band JD and the Straight Shot, but he has a lot to smile about. His Cablevision Systems was one of a handful of cable operators that didn’t experience a drop in basic customers during the second quarter. The company is expanding its footprint into less-competitive markets in the Rocky Mountain area once it completes its purchase of Bresnan Communications. And Mad Men, airing on Cablevision unit Rainbow Media’s AMC, is among the most popular programs on television these days.

He dealt with a messy programming spat with News Corp. in recent weeks and brought it to a halt last week, while raising red flags about retransmission consent.

Dolan joined the family business in the mid-1970s, after his father, Charles, formed Cablevision in 1973. He worked in various areas, including sales and programming. In 1995, the younger Dolan became CEO.

Since then, he has spent $4 billion to rebuild the MSO’s network to fiber, laying the foundation for phone service and offering a $90 triple-play bundle for 12 months. And he isn’t shy about disagreeing with dad, as he did when he argued against the company’s HD satellite service Voom a few years ago.

He’s convinced there is more room for growth. “[We’re] following the strategy my dad started back in the ’70s, which was to really push the value equation with the customer base, pack in as much value as you can, don’t worry necessarily about the margins but go for the volume,” he told Multichannel News in May. “And that’s really been the mantra for Cablevision since I was selling door-to-door back in the ’70s.”

JERALD KENT

Jerry Kent was a CPA helping put together the building blocks for Cencom Cable in 1983 when owner Bob Brooks asked him to come on board full-time.

Kent reluctantly agreed. He wasn’t sure an entrepreneurial career was to his liking.

“Bob was very persuasive and I was young, stupid and single and decided to make the plunge, and glad I did and never looked back,” Kent said in his 2003 oral history for The Cable Center.

Eventually he became Cencom’s chief financial officer, but left the firm in 1992 after the company was sold. It didn’t take him long to form his new company, Charter Communications, which eventually served 1.3 million customers.

Things were moving along pretty well, but in 1998, the business went into overdrive for Kent and his team at Charter. Billionaire Paul Allen needed a vehicle to ride his ambitions in the cable business and he made St. Louis-based Charter his race car in the chase to serve customers with advanced services.

Allen went on a spending spree, buying systems that eventually gave Charter systems counting 7 million customers. It was up to Kent to make sure the acquisitions were blended into a cohesive operation.

Charter went public under Kent’s tenure in what was billed as the thirdlargest IPO in U.S. history. Kent left Charter in 2001 after a falling out with Allen. But he didn’t wait long before jumping back into the cable business, forming Suddenlink Communications, which currently serves 1.2 million customers.

MARWAN FAWAZ

Marwan Fawaz wears a lot of hats as Charter Communications’ executive vice president of operations and chief technology officer. He oversees the company’s East and West operating groups, customer operations, human resources and business intelligence as well as Charter’s engineering, network management and information technology organizations.

When Fawaz was given the additional title of EVP in May 2010, Char ter CEO Mike Lovett said Fawaz brought a welcome combination of foresight, technical experience and passion for the cable industry.

Fawaz joined Charter in 2006 as CTO. He has worked for several cable and media companies including Times Mirror Cable, Continental Cablevision, MediaOne Group, Vulcan Ventures and Pilot House Ventures.

Being in charge of all the things Fawaz must keep track of may sound daunting, but it does help Charter keep from creating impenetrable silos.

For instance, Fawaz encourages engineering and marketing teams to come to each other’s meetings and communicate with each other on a regular basis. Engineers have to refrain from using tech-speak and marketers are encouraged to learn what the technology does and how it works.

Fawaz stresses simplicity in explaining technology, he told CED magazine in 2007. “With so many technology terms, the message gets lost. Focus on the product. What do customers see? What’s their experience?

“I want us to talk about the product, not about the minutiae of how to develop it,” Fawaz said.

ROBERT IGER

When Bob Iger took over as president and CEO of The Walt Disney Co. in 2005, many industry pundits didn’t think he’d last very long or be strong enough to lead the multimedia conglomerate.

But under Iger’s watchful eye, Disney purchased Pixar Animation Studios for $7 billion and comic book publisher and movie studio Marvel for $4 billion. He revamped the movie-studio operations, installing a television executive to head the unit.

Iger’s persuasive personality and negotiating skills resulted in the Chinese government’s approval of a Walt Disney World-like theme park to be built in Shanghai, a goal the company has tried to achieve for years, with little success until now.

Iger is a problem-solver and that’s important, given Disney’s wide-ranging businesses that range from ESPN to ABC to Disneyland to the Disney Stores. The company is a juggernaut in terms of kids’ content on the tube, the PC and the radio. But that doesn’t mean issues requiring delicate attention don’t crop up regularly.

“I like our people to solve problems on their own, and they usually do,” he told The New York Times in April. “But I will do a deep dive if there is a lot at stake or if there are creative challenges.”

Iger began his career as a weatherman for a local broadcasttelevision station and joined ABC in 1973. He gradually rose through the ranks, eventually taking over for Michael Eisner, who had been credited with reviving the entertainment firm until power struggles displaced him from his throne.

DEBRA LEE

Though she is responsible for reinvigorating and expanding the top cable brand in the African- American community, BET Networks chairman and CEO Debra Lee was initially more interested in communications law than in building a business.

Lee joined BET 25 years ago as general counsel. “More often than not, it’s trial by error to find out what you really like,” Lee told Broadcasting & Cable last month, when she was elected to the magazine’s Hall of Fame. “Whether it’s the industry, the company or the cause, you have to find something you’re excited about so it’s not work, it’s more passion and fun.”

The network that turns 30 years old this year broke ground as the first of its kind. But it also came under fire for programming that critics said demeaned women and perpetuated racial stereotypes.

After years of criticism from inside and outside the African- American community, Lee decided it was finally time to take action.

BET sponsored a two-day summit in Washington, D.C., in March, bringing together 130 successful black women — influential in politics, entertainment and nonprofits — to talk about portrayals of black women in the media, the problems facing African-American girls in urban schools, the state of the black family and other weighty issues.

Lee was instrumental in taking BET public in 1991, making it the first African-American company traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

She was at the helm of BET as president and chief executive officer when it went private again in 1998, and again in 2000 when BET was purchased by Viacom for $3 billion.

Today, BET reaches 89 million households. It closed the second quarter of 2010 with the highest performance among viewers in its 30-year history.

BILL NELSON, ERIC KESSLER AND RICHARD PLEPLER

HBO was enjoying a long string of programming hits in 2007, but internally, the company was in turmoil. Its leader, Chris Albrecht, was arrested for beating up his girlfriend and was forced out of the company.

Fortunately, there was a strong bench to step up and keep the momentum going.

Bill Nelson was named chairman. At the same time Eric Kessler and Richard Plepler were promoted to the newly created positions of co-president. Kessler oversees the marketing and worldwide distribution of HBO networks and content. And Plepler is responsible for HBO’s programming and corporate communications.

With this tenured team in place, HBO didn’t miss a beat. While some shows are wrapping up — Entourage and Big Love are in their last season — others, like True Blood, continue to draw viewers and new shows, including Boardwalk Empire, are receiving critical acclaim.

When the four executives were elevated three years ago, Jeff Bewkes, currently HBO parent Time Warner Inc.’s chairman said, “I’ve worked with Bill, Hal, Eric and Richard for many years, and there’s not a more skilled, cohesive or widely respected group of executives in the entertainment industry.”

Nelson, who joined HBO in 1984, was chief operating officer before his latest promotion. Akselrod had served as general counsel since 1992 and has been with HBO since 1983. Kessler was president, sales and marketing before his current position. He’s a relative newcomer to HBO, having joined it in 1995. Plepler, who had a character named after him in one episode of The Sopranos, was previously executive vice president and was involved in with all the creative aspects of the company. He joined HBO in 1992 as senior vice president of corporate communications.

This item was edited on Nov. 9, after it was published, to remove some outdated information about a former HBO executive, Harold Akselrad.

ABBE RAVEN

A&E Television Networks president and CEO Abbe Raven is on a roll.

Three of the 10 AETN owned-andoperated networks finished 2009 among the 20 most-watched networks on basic cable. A&E Network and History were among the top 10 in reaching the coveted 18-to-49- year-old demo during the first quarter of 2010.

Raven, who took the reins of AETN in 2005, has successfully made veteran brands A&E Network and History, which had skewed older, seem cool to younger viewers.

She was part of the creative team that launched The History Channel in 1995 and resuscitated the flagging A&E in 2004 by debuting nontraditional fare such as Dog the Bounty Hunter, Growing Up Gotti and Intervention.

In 2009, co-owners Disney/ABC Media Networks, Hearst and NBC Universal joined forces and merged Lifetime into AETN. Raven was put in charge of the new entity.

“What is very exciting for me is that Lifetime joins us at a time in which they’ve developed so many wonderful new programs, like Drop Dead Diva, another season of Army Wives, and it’s also a great success with their movies and with Project Runway,” Raven told Multichannel News last year. “And where I see us going with Lifetime is to continue that and introduce more original programming to the network.

“I’m working very closely with the Lifetime programming and marketing team about the development of new shows, not only for the upfront but for the future,” she said.

SUMNER REDSTONE

Not many people in the media business paid Sumner Redstone much attention until 1987, when he won control of Viacom from an investment group led by Viacom’s management. Seven years later he wrested control of Paramount Pictures and sealed his reputation as being one of the most powerful media moguls in the business.

Over the years, Redstone has attracted — and subsequently fired — many of the entertainment industry’s most well-respected and prominent executives including Frank Biondi, Tom Freston, and even Hollywood star Tom Cruise. He spent years grooming his daughter Shari to take his place as executive chairman of both Viacom and CBS Corp., but the two had a public falling out a few years ago.

Redstone has a reputation for being one of the most litigious executives in the country and his kids seem to have inherited that trait as well.

Redstone’s son, Brent, filed suit against the elder Redstone in 2006 asserting that he was entitled to more than $1 billion in National Amusements, the theater-chain business Redstone uses to control shares of Viacom and CBS.

Redstone has fought off rumors and questions about his ability to run Viacom given his age — 87 — but he perennially shrugs them off. When critics suggested that at 72 he was too old for the top job, Redstone compared himself to Bob Dole, the Republican candidate for president that year, who was the same age.

“If he can run America, believe me, I can run Viacom,” Redstone told The New York Times.

MATTHEW POLKA

Matt Polka is often referred to David as he battles media Goliaths like The Walt Disney Co., News Corp. and even other cable operators, notably Comcast now that it’s merging its media assets with NBC Universal. But he doesn’t seem to mind the comparison. He’s not afraid of mixing it up with the big companies if it means smaller operators get a fair shake at trying to run their own operations.

Polka, president and CEO of the American Cable Association, understands the trials and tribulations of being a small cable operator, having been one himself for awhile in the 1990s. Many of the ACA’s small, independent cable-operator members credit Polka’s passion, missionary zeal and empathy, as well as his intelligence and political savvy, with transforming the ACA into a powerful, if sometimes controversial, lobbying voice on Capitol Hill.

“ACA, and Matt Polka, really, is a key advocate for the small cable industry,” Federal Communications Commission member Jonathan Adelstein told Multichannel News in 2004. “Without them, the unique needs of these smaller companies wouldn’t get the attention that they deserve here at the commission.”

Representing smaller operators has given Polka a different perspective when it comes to figuring who and what is important. As a testament to his political chops, when Polka meets with lawmakers, he will often have a picture taken with the legislator, as well as his or her aide. And he sends that to the staffer as a thank you.

Lately, Polka has been trying to convince regulators and legislators that a combined Comcast-NBC Universal will be the more powerful than any media company should be. He’s stressing that the joint venture should not be allowed to bundle its owned-and-operated television stations or its regional sports networks in carriage agreements.

BRIAN ROBERTS

One could argue that Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts was born with a coaxial-cable teething ring in his mouth. The truth, though, is that Roberts has worked hard to earn the respect he deserves as one of the cable industry’s most pivotal leaders.

Roberts began attending cable meetings with his father Ralph, co-founder of Comcast, when he was just a youngster. His career with the company began when he was in high school: Roberts punched billing cards and sold service.

And though his dad encouraged him to work elsewhere when he graduated from college, Roberts refused and has worked for Comcast ever since.

Roberts has changed the course of the cable industry’s path more than once. In 1997, he dared Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to invest in Comcast. Gates did just that to the tune of $1 billion and the investment reinvigorated the entire sector and set off a fi restorm of consolidation.

He is now making history again by merging the MSO’s Comcast assets with NBC Universal in a deal that will make the Philadelpia-based cable operator one of the largest media companies in the world.

The resulting joint venture would be 51% owned by Comcast, 49% owned by current NBCU parent General Electric and managed by the cable fi rm. It will combine NBCU’s two broadcast television networks (NBC and Telemundo), its 26 broadcast-television stations, several national cable programming networks, a motion-picture studio, international theme park businesses and online content businesses with Comcast’s regional sports networks, other programming networks and certain online businesses.

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV

Sen. “Jay” Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) chairs the Senate Commerce Committee. As head of the powerful panel, he has repeatedly blasted the Federal Communications Commission as a broken organization. In 2009, Broadcasting & Cable quoted him telling incoming commissioners that the FCC under the Bush administration was “beholden” to the media industry it regulates. He also called the commission ideology-driven and insuffiiciently focused on consumers.

In his tenure as chairman of the Commerce Committee, Rockefeller has pushed for stronger online privacy laws and criticized the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, calling it long on vision and short on tactics.

In April, Rockefeller called out FCC chairman Julius Genachowski — the sole witness at an oversight hearing in the panel — calling the plan short on action and long on recommendations.

“I am going to challenge the FCC to make the hard choices that will help bring broadband to every corner of this country,” he said during the hearing, as reported in B&C. “Putting ideas on paper is not enough. Just seeking comment on a slew of issues is not enough. It’s action that counts.”

Rockefeller has long been the Senate’s loudest critic of TV violence. He has tried to lobby support from other Commerce Committee members to give the FCC the authority to curb excessive violence on broadcast and cable

The senator introduced a bill in August that would authorize an incentive auction to reimburse broadcasters for spectrum reclaimed by the government, but only as long as it was given up voluntarily. He also has been pushing the FCC to reform the Universal Service Fund.

JON STEWART

Jon Stewart may think of himself as political satirist and stand-up comic, but his The Daily Show on Comedy Central has become one of the go-to places for television viewers wanting to know what’s going on in the world of politics.

As a testament to his influence, his “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” rally held with pal Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, on Oct. 30 drew more than 200,000 people to The National Mall in Washington, D.C., according to CBS News. The rally was held in response to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally held in August. Beck has a radio show and has a television show on Fox News Channel. That confab drew about 87,000, according to CBS News.

The rally aired on Comedy Central, where Stewart and Colbert host their late night shows, as well as C-SPAN. Comedy told The New York Times there were 4 million views of the network’s live rally Web stream.

President Obama’s Oct. 28 visit to The Daily Show, a first for a sitting president, was watched by 2.8 million viewers, about 1 million more than the average for the show, according to The New York Times. But it wasn’t the show’s highest-rated show. It ranked third behind then-candidate Obama’s appearance in October 2008 and Michelle Obama’s appearance that same month.

And while Stewart perpetually denies being a serious journalist, when Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Stewart came in at No. 4, tied with Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, former CBS anchor Dan Rather and Anderson Cooper of CNN, according to The New York Times.


ANNE SWEENEY

As co-chairman of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television Group, Anne Sweeney has no trouble keeping busy. In the last year alone, she has replaced several of Disney’s executive team members; secured new retransmission-consent deals with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems; announced the launch of Disney Junior, a new channel for preschoolers; and formed partnerships with Apple’s iPad and NBC Universal’s Hulu.com.

Sweeney oversees ABC Studios, the ABC-Owned Television Stations Group, and the ABC Television Network, which provides entertainment, news and kids programming to viewers via more than 200 affiliated stations across the U.S. She also oversees Disney Channels Worldwide, a portfolio of 94 kid-driven, family-centric entertainment channels, as well as ABC Family and SoapNet, the company’s equity interest in A&E Television Networks, and Disney’s publishing imprint, Hyperion.

She is a vocal champion of new platforms. Under her watch, Disney was the fi rst television group to put content on new platforms, cutting a deal with Apple for ABC content on iTunes. Disney was the first programmer to introduce an ad-supported, full-episode player online and it was the first to have an app for the iPad.

Sweeney, who started her career typing memos for then- Nickelodeon boss Geraldine Laybourne, likes a challenge and is known as a risk-taker. “I love it. Give me the next great problem,” she told Multichannel News in 2009

Overseeing a global team of 10,000 employees and 10 divisions, Sweeney landed at No. 69 on Forbes magazine’s list of the 2010 World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.

BOB STANZIONE

Bob Stanzione thought he wanted to be an engineer in the auto industry, designing hot rods. He didn’t end up making fast cars, but as chairman and CEO of Arris, he’s in charge of making super-fast cable modems.

Stanzione has grown the company into the biggest technology supplier that caters exclusively to the cable industry and is the top provider of voice-and-data consumer-premises equipment to cable worldwide. Motorola and Cisco Systems are larger overall, but Stanzione told Multichannel News in 2009 that Arris can be nimbler by remaining aligned with cable.

“By being focused, we don’t get distracted,” he said. “We don’t have to come up with solutions that meet multiple market needs.”

Stanzione has been loyal to the cable industry through thick and thin times, Mike Pohl told Multichannel News in 2009. Pohl, who now serves as a consultant to Arris after the company purchased C-COR in 2007, said Stanzione has been able to keep a solid team together because “he’s a pretty straight shooter. You don’t have to guess what he means. He’ll tell you.”

Stanzione got into the cable business after spending 26 years with AT&T. In the late 1980s, he was working on a Bell Labs skunk-works project with Antec (then Anixter) called Laser Link, which developed a way to modulate a radio-frequency signal over wavelengths of light. He met several cable operators as a result and liked their style, he told Multichannel News last year. He was hooked and has been in the cable business ever since.

TONY WERNER

As Comcast’s chief technology offiicer, Tony Werner is at the forefront of some of the industry’s most cutting-edge technological advancements. Indeed, Werner is used to being at the front of the pack having worked at Tele-Communications Inc., AT&T Broadband and Liberty Global.

He is widely acknowledged as a clear and thorough communicator, with strong technical and financial acumen. He is currently in charge of guiding Comcast’s long-term technology strategy, including nextgeneration architectures, security, advertising methods and associated components. He told Multichannel News in May he doesn’t believe fiber-to-the-home is a necessity and thinks there is plenty of gas left in DOCSIS, noting that Comcast has successfully tested downstream speeds of 1 Gigabit per second over coaxial cable in its labs.

Instead, he’s been more anxious to get digital terminal adapters, lowcost devices that replicate analog channel lineups in digital format, into the hands of millions of Comcast subscribers — a move that frees up space for new high-definition channels and faster Internet links.

“We try not to lose sight of where we are and what’s important, but we spend our time focusing more on emerging trends and where we are going, and then building the right technology platform with the right elements to compete in the upcoming years,” Werner told Broadcasting & Cable when he was elected to that magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2010. “There’s a lot of focus on video content, and on making the receiving of that content more convenient for customers.”

Comcast recently completed its $500 million analog reclamation project converting all of its 23 million customers to all digital systems. The effort freed up bandwidth so Comcast could offer more advanced bandwidth- heavy services.


MICHAEL WILLNER

Michael Willner hung around broadcast studios when he was a kid and even studied broadcast TV in college, but he knew he wanted to get into the cable business.

“I knew that cable was the future and I decided early on that I wanted to get into a business moving forward rather than one of the past,” Willner told Multichannel News in 2008, when he was inducted into The Cable Center’s Hall of Fame.

Willner started his cable career as the program director for Vision Cable in Fort Lee, N.J. It would be the first of two companies he’s worked for since getting into the business in 1974. In short order, he was managing the system and hasn’t looked back. In 1985, Willner’s entrepreneurial instincts took over and he formed Insight Communications with Sid Knafel, who ran Vision Cable.

Willner served two consecutive terms as National Cable & Telecommunications Association chairman. He has also served as chairman of CablePAC since 2000. Willner was elected chairman of The Cable Center’s board of directors in 2007. He also serves on the executive committee of CableLabs; the board of directors of CSPAN and the Walter Kaitz Foundation.

Willner has a reputation as a consensusbuilder. He was instrumental in getting 11 publicly held cable companies to uniformly report their financial results to Wall Street analysts so the industry could better represent itself to investors.

“[Willner] understands the industry well and coupled with his natural leadership skills, he has been quite effective,” Decker Anstrom, former Landmark Communications CEO and former NCTA president, told Multichannel News in 2008. “People listen and respect him. And he has earned that respect every step of the way.”

CYMA ZARGHAMI

Cyma Zarghami thought she wanted to be a teacher and, when she moved to New York after graduating and took a job at Viacom- owned Nickelodeon, she thought it’d be a short-term gig. Seventeen years later, Zarghami is now president of Nick and MTV Networks Kids & Family Group.

She oversees all of Nick’s television businesses, including Nickelodeon’s digital services: Nick Jr., TeenNick, Nickelodeon Games and Sports (Nick GAS) and Nicktoons. Zarghami also oversees all program production and development for Nick’s television businesses, as well as marketing, programming and creative.

Zarghami began her career with Nickelodeon 17 years ago and was instrumental in the launch of Nickelodeon UK in 1993 and TV Land in 1996, among other initiatives.

Nickelodeon has been ranked among the most watched networks for eight years in a row under Zarghami’s watch. Nickelodeon also reigns as the No. 1-ranked network for kids on Saturday mornings surpassing all broadcast and cable competition, according to Viacom.

A kids programming veteran, Zarghami has managed and/or launched a continuous string of hits at Nickelodeon, including SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents and Dora the Explorer. Nickelodeon recently announced it will begin airing a sequel to the successful animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender in 2011.

This year, TeenNick used the 10th season for DeGrassi: The Next Generation to test the viability of the telenovela format.

“We’re making additional episodes, a little more in the telenovela format a bit faster, cheaper and more efficient,” she told the New York Daily News in March.

Nickelodeon wants to test to see whether viewers will tune into new episodes in a pattern that more closely resembles a daytime soap opera. If it works, other shows could follow suit.