Through the Wire

McKinsey (Ex- and Current) Factor

Once a McKinsey man, always a McKinsey man?

Not necessarily, but the skills learned at the global management-consulting firm can pay dividends even after an executive leaves McKinsey & Co.

Take the case of the early retirements of Time Warner Cable vice chairman and chief operating officer John Billock and president Tom Baxter on Jan. 14. While the news circulated throughout cable early that morning, several sources said they’d heard from people inside the cable company that the catalyst was a study conducted by McKinsey which suggested that Time Warner streamline two management levels by combining the titles of president and COO.

It soon became clear Time Warner Cable never hired McKinsey and McKinsey was never involved in the study. But though Time Warner didn’t concede the information initially, a former McKinsey partner wrote it.

His name is Dolf DiBiasio, and he’s a former executive vice president of strategy and investments at Time Warner. Before signing on at AOL Time Warner Inc. in 2001, he spent 20 years at McKinsey, where he was a senior partner. He retired from Time Warner last year — two years after helping the company work up an organizational structure for its America Online unit, according to a Fortune magazine article at the time.

DiBiasio wrote the report that led to the most recent changes at Time Warner Cable, company spokesman Mark Harrad confirmed last week.

McKinsey’s cable ties are certainly timely. The consultancy has been working up a management review for Charter Communications Inc. since September. And Charter’s interim CEO, Robert May, was at Cablevision Systems Corp. as an operations executive when that MSO brought McKinsey in for a strategic review, Charter pointed out last week in discussing the departure of CEO Carl Vogel.

McKinsey spokesman Mitch Kent didn’t return a phone call seeking comment on the company’s cable ties last week.

Masters of Pigs Going Guerilla

Be on the lookout. The “cable pig” might be gone — only to be replaced by pickets.

Cable operators in markets from Seattle to Syracuse have found their offices picketed by “consumers” angry about the high price of digital cable. But these protests are really guerrilla marketing tactics from local retailers of EchoStar Communications Corp.’s Dish Network.

“Our retailers are enjoying doing these demonstrations where the cost of digital cable is too high,” confirmed EchoStar Satellite LLC spokesman Kelley Baca. “We’re supporting them,” she added, helping local dealers “get bodies” to join the protest, and helping to notify the local media of the demonstration.

The picket lines are part of the satellite service’s national campaign questioning digital cable costs, according to Baca.

But some operator targets say the protests actually provided an opening for the local cable executives to raise the issue of Dish Network’s own rate increases.

To counter a demonstration in Syracuse Jan. 20, the targeted Time Warner Cable system took out full-page newspaper ads calling the Dish Network-backed criticism “hypocritical.”

Steve Kipp, spokesman for Comcast Corp. in Seattle, said the demonstration at that system’s fulfillment office Jan. 14 attracted only four or five picketers who were gone by lunch.

“A lot of customers were coming in, and they were actually put off by the picketers. One customer said, 'Can I go out there and tell them how much I like Comcast?’ ” Kipp related.

He added: “There were no stories about Dish’s price increase until their protest.”

They Still Love Cable, But Scribes? Not Sure

Comedian Dennis Leary and Rescue Me co-creator Peter Tolan have taken Ted Turner’s former mantle as the men who will say anything that comes to mind.

The pair followed up a profanity-laden, insult-spewing presentation at the July edition of the Television Critics Association press tour with a slightly less profane but equally critical presentation at this month’s press tour.

Tolan opened by noting that critics counted more than 50 F-bombs in the previous presentation and vowed to eschew that word this time. He and Leary decided to eliminate the obscenity by replacing it with a genital colloquialism.

They were men of their word.

Then, since they were being politically incorrect, Tolan decided to take off after a critic who had made him mad.

“Is the L.A. Times critic here?” he asked, scanning the room for the negative reviewer. “I get that delivered to my home, and I gotta read that s---? F--- you!”

If the reviewer was there, he or she was very, very quiet.

The good news is Leary and Tolan remain quite happy to working on cable, especially at FX.

“Never say never, but I can’t really see going back to broadcast,” said Leary.

He’d certainly have to clean up his F---in’ speech.