Through the Wire

The sale of Broadbus Technologies to Motorola ($181 million) and of Tandberg Television to Ericsson ($1.4 billion) had an interesting ripple effect: the cable technology geek band didn't gig at any parties at The Cable Show in Vegas last week.

To the disappointment of guitar ace Steve Craddock of Comcast, soulful keyboardist Gary Smith of Tandberg and other regular and semi-regular band members, there was no opportunity to hear them bang out covers.

Or to watch former Comcast chief technical officer Dave Fellows, former Broadbus president (and current Motorola executive) Jeff Binder and other cable luminaries, including a certain chairman and Hendrix scholar, trade hot guitar licks. Or enjoy the occasional singing standout, such as Time Warner Cable's Julie Simon, belt out “God Bless the Child.”

Fortunately, the disappointment was so keen that Binder, who helped organize party performances at National Shows in New Orleans (2004), San Francisco (2005) and Atlanta last year, backed by Tandberg and other vendors, is determined to get the band together in New Orleans next May.

And it might play a charity gig sometime sooner, such as at the Cable Hall of Fame dinner in Denver in October, the CableLabs summer summit or even the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Cable-Tec Expo in Orlando, Fla., next month, although that might be pushing too hard, Binder said.

“One of the things about the party that made it interesting is it was reasonably exclusive,” Binder said. “Only about 200 of our closest industry friends.” The idea being tossed around for next time is to keep it relatively intimate, but also raise funds for some worthy cause, he said.

“We'll bring Tom Jokerst out of retirement for a tune or two,” Binder added, referring to the former Charter Communications senior VP and Broadbus CTO who's lately been ailing, according to friends.

Rock on, guys.

Oxygen held its sixth annual luncheon for women executives at The Cable Show last week, usually good for some B-list celebrity fun (think Fabio). Network chief Gerry Laybourne didn't disappoint, introducing new mom Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott, her actor-husband, at Mix at The HOTel at Mandalay Bay, high above the Sin City skyline. Their reality show for Oxygen, Tori & Dean: Inn Love, was just renewed for a second season.

“We celebrated our one-year anniversary yesterday and got our pick-up [for Inn Love] the same day officially, so it's great,” Spelling said.

McDermott seemed quite happy to be surrounded by women. “When I was single, I would have this fantasy,” he told the crowd.

And capping it off was a performance by Billy Joel's daughter, singer Alexa Ray Joel.

There's a side benefit to the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino for hosting The Cable Show. It gets — and gets to keep — a high-speed, two-way cable system.

Two floors of the South Hall of the Mandalay's convention center were turned into a 100-Megabit-per-second cable network in time for the show. Any exhibitor was able to hook into the network to show off the capability of equipment or services, from video-on-demand, to digital video, to high-definition programming.

A second 100 Mbps connection was been put in place solely for the use of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the organizer of the event. That allowed the NCTA to run demonstrations of services without sharing any bandwidth.

The upgrade was performed for nearly $100,000 by Cox Business Services, the commercial unit of Atlanta-based Cox Communications.

The new infrastructure was connected into Cox's Las Vegas cable plant as well, so that exhibitors could pull programming from the live Cox network, according to vice president of technology John Fountain.

The Mandalay's network was originally installed in the late '90s and, until now, was the equivalent of a one-way, 450-Mhz cable network.

Hundreds of hopefuls tried, but there was only one winner.

The Sportsman Channel always seemed to have a line at its booth with its abbreviated take on Deal or No Deal. Rechristened “Deer or No Deer,” the promotion lured players (and potential affiliates) with the game, in which players picked from among three briefcase-bearing, antler-wearing models. Find the case with one or two logos of deer heads, and it was your show-floor standard pen or T-shirt. Find three deer and it was a chance to have your name drawn for the sweepstakes.

Las Vegas was lucky for Allen Hoopes, CEO of Silver Star Communications of Jackson Hole, Wyo. His name was drawn for the trip for two to the Bahamas.