Vanguard Award for Associates and Affiliates

Mike Pohl would like to sell you some video-on-demand and digital advertising systems.

But that doesn’t mean this cable-industry trailblazer — and hard-core golf buff — won’t try to beat you convincingly on the links.

“If you’re a client, he doesn’t give you any slack. He wants to win,” Charter Communications chief technology officer Marwan Fawaz said. “He’s very competitive in golf.”

Fawaz calls Pohl “kind of the quintessential entrepreneur in the cable industry,” who seems to know just about everyone. “If there’s a mayor for the cable industry, Mike would be it,” he said.

In recent years, Pohl has made his mark in the VOD space, and his companies keep getting bought up. Currently, he’s the interim general manager of on-demand systems for Arris, following the company’s 2007 purchase of C-COR.

“We feel lucky to have Mike on our team,” Arris chairman and CEO Bob Stanzione said in a statement. “He has a long and outstanding record of technological innovation, sales leadership and commitment to the customer.”

At C-COR, Pohl headed global strategies. In 2002, C-COR bought Larry Ellison’s nCube, which had just appointed Pohl chief executive. That came after nCube in 1999 acquired SkyConnect, an ad-insertion company which Pohl ran as president and CEO.

Joe Matarese, Arris vice president of advanced technology, worked with Pohl at nCube and C-COR. He confirms that Pohl’s long tenure in the industry has made him one of the best-connected executives in the vendor community.

“It’s amusing walking a show floor with him,” Matarese said. “You take five steps, and you see him shake hands with somebody he knows. After 50 steps and 10 people, you decide you need to get to your meeting.”

Pohl, 56, has swung many different clubs in his quarter-century in cable.

Early in his career, he directed franchising for two operators, Tribune Cable and Douglas Communications. As a national industry lobbyist, Pohl pushed for passage of the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, which established community franchising and led to the creation of public, educational and governmental (PEG) channels.

He has actively contributed to National Cable & Telecommunications Association efforts, as well as CableLabs, Cable TV Pioneers and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers.

And he has been an advocate for small cable operators, helping to create the HITS (Headend In the Sky) satellite service for digital programming, now operated by Comcast Media Center.

Pohl marvels at the transformation of the industry into a multibillion-dollar force.

“It’s gone from people dragging antennas up the side of hills to get better reception, to the invention of pay TV and the tremendous expansion of digital services,” he said. “People in the cable industry have great vision. They have that entrepreneurial spirit.”

Fawaz noted that Pohl himself pursued a vision of advanced advertising, starting with SkyConnect in the 1990s, that is now coming to fruition.

“He was really ahead of the industry on the product,” Fawaz said. “It wasn’t just movies on demand. He was already thinking about advertising.”

Pohl acknowledged that the cable industry has yet to realize the full potential of interactive advertising and VOD. But he disputed the idea that operators are cautious in deploying new technologies.

“You’re not cautious when you’ve invested the type of money this industry has,” he said. “People like Ralph Roberts had real intestinal fortitude to build their businesses.”

This year several major operators are ganging up to give interactive advertising a stronger push forward. Comcast, Time Warner Cable and four others are reportedly pouring upwards of $150 million into “Project Canoe.” The still-under-wraps initiative is supposed to unify technical standards and business processes, so that cable can sell interactive and targeted ads more easily — and on a much bigger scale.

“One of the amazing things to me is that we’re sitting down now and talking about the strategy for how to do this,” Pohl said.

He’s of the opinion, of course, that considerable revenue from new forms of advertising will be cable’s for the taking. “I truly believe there are billions of dollars out there that will become readily available,” he said.

Pohl realizes, though, that the enabling infrastructure can’t be installed overnight.

“One of the reasons I’ve been around so long is that I’m not a particularly patient person, but I understand why things need to happen the way they do,” Pohl said. “It’s easy to see the new idea of the month, the next latest-and-greatest thing. It’s easy to think great thoughts. But the issue is taking those things to market.”

Known for his dry sense of humor, Pohl often jokes in presentations that he’s “unencumbered by engineering principles.” The punchline comes after he has outlined some kind of new capability — and then hands it over to a colleague to drill into the nitty-gritty technical details.

But the quip belies a practical side to his nature, according to Matarese.

“His view of what’s possible has as much to do with understanding the people as much as the technology,” Matarese said. “There are a bunch of technologists who can focus on plugging stuff together. He really focuses on what the people running the businesses are looking for.”

Pohl is planning to stay with Arris at least through the end of 2008 — “I’m working to help these boys get the video business expanded” — and then plans to move on.

“I’m looking at what the opportunities are,” he said.

But it would be tough for Pohl to move away from the Portland, Ore., area, where he relocated following nCube’s acquisition of SkyConnect.

“It’s God’s country,” said Pohl, who has also lived in San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Denver; and the New York area.

And in the Portland area, he added, “there are some spectacular golf courses.”