Cable Television Pioneers 2005
New Members of Pioneers Group Add A New Layer of Legends
By Craig Kuhl -- Multichannel News, 4/3/2005 8:00:00 PM
In 1948, a patchwork of small, rural communities in Arkansas, Oregon and Pennsylvania began receiving TV signals via miles of cable strung from telephone poles to select local residents. It was the dawning of the cable industry, a fledgling technology and concept fraught with risks and challenges, but nevertheless attracting a collection of entrepreneurs, curiosity-seekers and inventors.
Most of them had serious doubts about this new technology and if it would ever become a real business. Now, many who hail from that era — and the decades that followed — are members of the exclusive and very private Cable Television Pioneers organization. The group now includes some 500 members, and this week at the National Show, 19 others join the fold.
| Cable TV Pioneers Class Of 2005 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Member | Title | Company |
| David Andersen | Senior VP, Communications | Charter Communications |
| Gerald Dash | Senior VP, Training Services | RCH Cable Outsourcing |
| Robert Gastonguay | Executive Director | Nevada State Cable Telecommunications Assoc. |
| Melvin Gray | Sr. VP, Engineering | PDI Communications |
| Gus Hauser | Founder | Hauser Communications |
| Charles Hembree | Area Manager | Cebridge Connections |
| Wesley Heppler | Partner | Cole, Raywid & Braverman |
| Scott Hults | VP, Communications | EWTN Global Network |
| Jerome Kern | Director | Playboy Enterprises |
| Wayne Knighton | Director | South Carolina Cable Television Assoc. |
| Kevin Leddy | Senior VP, Strategy | Time Warner Cable and Development |
| McAdory Lipscomb | Director, Integrated Marketing | Accenture |
| David O’Hayre | Executive VP, Investments | Time Warner Cable |
| Mark Palazzo | VP/GM, Access Networks | Scientific-Atlanta |
| Bill Roberts | President | 21st Century Satellite Communications and Cable Media Associates |
| Dolph Simons Jr. | Chairman | Sunflower Broadband |
| Jud Stewart | VP, Marketing and Programming | Armstrong Utilities |
| Rodney Warner | President | The R Corp. |
| Eugene White | VP, Engineering | Bright House Networks |
All have played their part, adding to the entrepreneurial spirit, creativity — and in some instances tenacious grit — that has made cable the booming industry that it is today. But, in keeping with another club mandate, they have also worked to serve their communities and activate pro-social change.
One of the first true pioneers, Ike Blonder, founder of equipment manufacturer Blonder Tongue Laboratories Inc., captured the industry’s early struggles and its wild, woolly attitude with this quote from an industry history published by Multichannel News sister publication CED: “I had inventions that nobody wanted. So I started in the basement of a building in New York City that had been a bookmaker’s joint before I moved in. Police raided us our first day there.”
And pioneer Archer Taylor, who launched one of the country’s first cable systems in 1952 in Missoula, Mont., and has just released a book titled Pioneer Tales From Cable TV History, had this to say: “There was a low degree of engineering sophistication. It was truly seat-of-the-pants. It’s amazing that this industry got started.”
The club’s humble beginnings were germinated on an evening at the convention organized by the upstart National Cable Television Association (now the National Cable & Telecommunications Association) in 1966, where tales of cable’s early pioneers began taking on lives of their own.
The initial group consisted of 21 members, including George Barco, founder of the Meadville, Pa., cable system, one of the earliest cable companies; Jack Crosby, whose accomplishments include the introduction of cable to Mexico, and Bill Daniels, founder of the brokerage company Daniels & Associates. “It was just a social group then,” says Ben Conroy, a founder of the Pioneers and a past chairman.
Since that time, the organization has developed scholarship funds and helped create what is now The Cable Center in Denver. Yet it’s primary purpose remains the same: To celebrate and pay tribute to cable industry pioneers and act as keeper of cable’s historical data, photos and maintain its ongoing oral history of the industry.
NEWCOMER TALES
Incoming Pioneer Dolph Simons Jr. recalls that he caught the cable “bug” some 40 years ago when he heard a speaker at a newspaper publishing conference say that the cable revolution was coming. He got the message, and asked a young engineer at the equipment supplier Jerrold Electronics named John Malone — now chairman of Liberty Media Corp. — to help build his Lawrence, Kan., cable system. “We turned it on without a single paying customer,” chuckles Simons, who now serves as chairman of the cable and telecommunications company Sunflower Broadband.
Another new member, Melvin Gray, who is currently senior vice president of engineering at the headend equipment manufacturer PDI Communications Inc., began his cable career in 1957 after answering a Boston newspaper ad for help in an “associated industry to TV.”
“I was hired by [Jerrold Electronics founder] Milt Shapp in 1957, and 48 years later I’m still in the business. At Jerrold, we were the most gung-ho group of people I’d ever known. Nobody could touch us,” Gray remembers.
As an engineer in 1959, Gray tinkered with a technology called pay-per-view video. And PPV is among the many accomplishments of another new Pioneer member, the international lawyer-turned cable executive Gus Hauser, founder of the MSO Hauser Communications Inc. In addition to developing PPV service, he is considered the architect of the Warner Cable Communications media empire of the 1970s and 1980s. While there he helped create such innovative networks as Nickelodeon, MTV: Music Television, The Movie Channel and the legendary interactive TV service QUBE.
The career paths the group’s new members took were as varied — and sometimes as winding — as the roads that traverse rural United States. For example, Charles Hembree, currently an area manager overseeing Kansas and Oklahoma for St. Louis-based MSO Cebridge Communications, began building cable systems in Lincoln, Neb., in the late 1960s and later took a job with TelePrompTer, an early cable system, in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Hembree remembers his first encounter with the young Ted Turner, a fellow Pioneer. “He told me: 'I have a plan to put the Atlanta Braves on a satellite and make them America’s team.’ I told him that’s the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. He became a visionary, and I didn’t.”
Gerald Dash, a 31-year cable veteran who currently is a senior vice president of training for the marketing and customer-service company RCH Cable Outsourcing Services, began his cable career on the street selling door-to-door. “That was the real key for me,” Dash says. “There’s never been a dull day, even though sales people have never really been recognized.”
The Pioneers organization is trying to remedy that, says Art Dwyer, chairman of the group. “It has always been about recognizing all of the people who have helped build the cable industry.”
Adds Les Read, executive director of the Pioneers: “It began as just a group of people who deserved to be recognized. Back then, who were they? Today, we look on them as the true pioneers in the industry.”
THE NEW BREED
The variety of Pioneers deserving of recognition has grown exponentially with the business. In the last 20 years, the cable industry has required a new breed of professionals focused more deeply on such areas as sales, marketing, programming, public affairs as well as affiliate, investor and government relations.
Inductee Rodney Warner brought a strong background in marketing and programming to MSO Storer Communications, where he served as vice president of marketing. “When [Home Box Office] and Turner’s [TBS] superchannel came up, that’s when I had an epiphany about cable. It needed an audience builder and marketing, and I knew I could do that with the skills I had,” says Warner, currently present of The R Corp., a media consulting and investments company.
Other incoming members also helped elevate marketing functions to a crucial status within the cable industry. They include McAdory “Mac” Lipscomb, currently director of integrated marketing and high tech at Accenture. He was a founding member of the Cable Antenna Television Association and a public-relations and marketing force at Showtime during his tenure there. Also noteworthy is Jud Stewart, who began his cable career putting “O” rings on connectors after school and now is vice president of marketing and programming for cable provider Armstrong Utilities Inc.
Dave Andersen, an inductee whose career spans 23 years at Cox Communications Inc. and Charter Communications Inc., is generally regarded as one of the top strategists in public relations, investor relations, government relations and public affairs, where he has brought a pro-active mentality to the industry. “Since the beginning, it has been a fast-paced business experience for me, and a real test of fortitude, having lasted through three presidents at both Cox and Charter,” says Andersen, who currently serves as Charter’s senior vice president of communications.
The cable career of Scott Hults, who started in 1980 as regional sales director for Warner Amex, was rerouted in 1994 through “divine intervention,” when he heeded a call from Mother Angelica, another Pioneer, to develop the Eternal Word TV Network. Today, Hults continues his stewardship as vice president of communications for the EWTN Global Network.
For inductee Kevin Leddy, who began his career at the NCTA as a research manager, it has always been about marketing, and technology. “I’ve tried to bridge the gap between marketing and technology sides of the business,” says Leddy in a written statement. He currently serves as senior vice president of strategy and development for the advanced technology group at Time Warner Cable.
LEGAL EAGLES
Legal counsel to the cable industry has been a vital component to its growth since the early days of franchising. The breadth of legal matters confronting the early pioneers was staggering, and one of the first law firms to cover the sector, Cole, Raywid & Braverman, continues its representation of cable on several fronts. Wes Heppler, an attorney at the firm, represented virtually every MSO in the 1980s and 1990s in Federal Communications Commission, copyright and franchising matters.
Jerome Kern, another general counsel in the new group of Pioneers, negotiated most of the acquisition agreements that resulted in Tele-Communications Inc. becoming the largest cable television provider of its day. Kern, who currently serves as a director at Playboy Enterprises, has negotiated many of the largest multiparty transactions in the industry.
Brokering deals has also been the claim to fame for Bill Roberts. While he first established himself in the cable business by operating local origination studios for the MSO Times Mirror in 1969, he eventually helped negotiate a flurry of acquisitions and mergers during the go-go 1980s and into the early 1990s. Currently, he is president at both 21st Century Satellite Communications and Tampa, Fla.-based media brokerage and investment company Cable Media Associates.
Wayne Knighton got his foothold in cable when he joined the MSO SouthMedia Co. as vice president and general manager in 1974. For the next 30 years, he held top executive positions at Cox and Time Warner, and then started Prime Paging LLP, an Atlanta-based telephone paging operation.
Along with way, he found time to act as director and president of state cable television associations in Georgia, Minnesota and South Carolina. In fact, he still serves as a director of the South Carolina Cable Television Association.
The path for inductee Robert Gastonguay into the cable industry was far different than most: he segued from the textile business. “I ran a knitting plant in Fall River, Mass., and due to a mid-life crisis, moved my family to Reno, Nev., to sell cable door-to-door. My first question when answering an ad for a TelePrompTer salesman was: What the heck is cable?” Gastonguay recalls with a laugh.
For the past 10 years, he has been executive director of the Nevada State Cable Telecommunications Association, where he has been instrumental in negotiating pole agreements and lobbying for the cable industry at both the state and national levels.
Another area of expertise that’s been crucial to the development of the cable business is finance. And it’s in that field that inductee David O’Hayre has excelled. Beginning in the late 1960s with a five-year stint at the giant accounting firm Arthur Young, O’Hayre helped develop the “cluster strategy,” now an industry standard, and provided guidance to the NCTA’s financial affairs committee. Today he serves as executive vice president of investments for Time Warner.
From day one, the cable industry has relied on spirited, innovative engineers and the advancement of futuristic technologies. Inductees Mark Palazzo, vice president and general manager of access networks for Scientific-Atlanta Inc., and Eugene White, vice president of engineering for Bright House Networks, embody that same can-do attitude.
White, who began his cable career as an installer and technician at TCI in 1973, pioneered early fiber deployment at the fiber-to-feeder system in Davenport, Iowa, and has provided invaluable training and supervision.
In 1980 Palazzo entered the cable industry as a technician for Storer. He helped develop and launch a number of training programs for technicians, which not only were widely used in the U.S., but around the globe.
It’s not hard to imagine that as the newest members of the Pioneers join the fold, its older members will reflect on how much the industry has changed — a sentiment that will undoubtedly be echoed in future years by people being enshrined now. There’s little doubt that the new crop of inductees is helping to connect the past and future.
“The industry has come a long way since the night those first 21 people were called up on stage to receive their Pioneer awards,” says Conroy.
It’s the pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit, however, that links all of the members, and the overriding purpose of the Cable Television Pioneers, as they salute this year’s honorees.
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