Through the Wire

Last week’s announcement that The Cable Show ’08 next May will feature numerous and as-yet-unspecified tributes and recovery aid for New Orleans focused attention anew on the convention’s return to that troubled city and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

After Hurricane Katrina and resultant flooding devastated the city in August 2005, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association had hoped its May 2006 convention would be staged there, as a gesture of support to the city that’s hosted it eight times.

But labor concerns, in particular, prompted a shift to Atlanta, with a promise to go back to the Crescent City in 2008. The 2007 convention was in Las Vegas.

At events during Diversity Week in New York, some people quietly expressed concern about going back to New Orleans even now.

Is the city — and its hotels and restaurants, as well as the convention center itself — up to having these 15,000 or so attendees back, regardless of fond memories of dinners, cocktails and musical delights from shows past?

NCTA senior vice president of industry affairs Barbara York said the organization takes any such concerns seriously.

In a few weeks, she said, the plan is to invite exhibiting companies to New Orleans to meet with contractors, hospitality representatives, labor officials and others to address any logistical worries there might be about hosting the convention.

“What I want them to do is feel comfortable with what we have there,” York said.

Also, it’s important for others concerned “to see the city for themselves,” York said in a brief interview after the Walter Kaitz Foundation dinner in New York. “Because a ton of people haven’t gone back to New Orleans.”

In her own return visits for show-planning purposes, York said she noticed one surprising difference. She could always count on the hotels to have a signature background smell that she always associated with New Orleans. Now it’s gone, she said — along with the mildewed carpets.

York also said the “activities and opportunities” the association has in store to help out and celebrate New Orleans will be “multi-faceted,” but there’s nothing to announce yet.

Char Beales, CEO of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, said she was sure people would be ready to go back by next May, especially when NCTA’s plans for tributes and good-will gestures become publicized.

Rocco Commisso, the chairman and CEO of Mediacom Communications and co-chair (with BET Networks CEO Debra Lee) of The Cable Show ’08, said he’s heard nothing negative about the return to New Orleans, and justifiably so.

“We’re going to go back,” he said. “We’re going to give back. New Orleans has been a phenomenal venue and part of the history of our business.”

“I think it’s going to be a great convention,” Commisso said. “I think we owe it to the city. You don’t just run away when you have a problem. It’s not the nature of our industry and it’s not my nature, personally.” Mediacom’s operations, he noted, have been hit by three hurricanes in recent years, including Katrina.

Video-on-demand, digital video recorders and Internet video have changed the way millions watch TV. Now, in an unexpected development, VOD may also be threatening to alter cherished bedtime routines for parents everywhere.

Comcast senior vice president of new media Matt Strauss, speaking on a panel in New York last week about the perennial question of whether broadband video is the cable industry’s buddy or bête noire, illustrated the point of subscribers expecting full control over TV with a personal example.

“I was reading a book to my son, and he said, 'Daddy — pause,’ because he had to go to the bathroom,” Strauss said, eliciting chuckles. “I don’t think he even knows what live television is.”

Strauss also drew laughs with his example for why broadband video on TVs isn’t a killer value proposition on its own: “The first thing I’m thinking about is not streaming 'Obama Girl’ ” — a popular YouTube celebrity who sings about her unrequited love for the presidential candidate — “to my big-screen television.”

The panel, “Over the Top TV: Can Broadband Video Be Cable’s Newest Opportunity?”, was presented by the New York chapter of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.

Kenderick Scorza of Little Rock, Ark., has learned what all dieters struggle with: “Eating healthy is hard!”

The 13-year-old is one of the stars of Nickelodeon’s “Lets Just Play: Go Healthy Challenge” (see Marketing, page 66), and he had both great obstacles to overcome and a huge impetus for letting cameras into his life.

His family is still getting familiar with Little Rock after being displaced from their original home, New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina. The family as a whole does not eat healthily, he told The Wire.

But then, at 26, his older brother had a heart attack. Now 27, his sibling has also had a stroke. His grandmother has diabetes, he added.

“That made me realize” the possible results of his lifestyle. When a friend mentioned that Nickelodeon was holding auditions for the challenge nearby at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Kenderick was ready to commit.

The hardest part?

“No fried foods, no candy. I really missed [spicy] hot chips,” he said. But he learned to make substitutions: baked potato chips, spaghetti made with whole wheat pasta and ground turkey.

Kenderick has lost 40 pounds and led his family in the effort, too. The family overall has lost 100 lbs.

He’s discovered he likes the cameras. The middle-school student now says he wants to be an actor.

Speaking of his television debut, Kenderick vows to make the habits he learned from Nick permanent.

“I will always eat healthy. This is a life-changing process for me,” he stated firmly.