In the pre-obituary tributes to Steve Jobs — a month ago when he resigned as Apple CEO and we all knew that the end was near — one memorable homage quoted him as saying that he saw his role as “leader.”

Not a manager or chief executive, but “leader” - a term that is bandied around all too frequently in the media-telecom-political-tech world, but is rarely applied accurately.

As many of today’s Jobs’ testimonials acknowledge, the Apple co-founder was a tough, opinionated decision-maker. He was an inspiration to many. He was not focused on the next financial quarter, but rather he was a visionary who was comfortable committing to a long view.

For many years, I’ve lamented the disappearance of iconic “leaders” in the media and telecom industries. Not that we need too many Murdochs, who are household names. But it was grand when the industry had “Malone” and “Turner” to inspire (of instill fear) - and to let the world know what was coming next in cable. No individual should or can speak for the whole industry (OK, maybe the lobbyists think they can do that). But true leaders’ visions can build great enterprises, and they lend a face to put with those ventures. Let’s see if “Pittman” brings a face to Clear Channel as he did, sort of, at MTV and AOL, but not so much at Century 21 Real Estate or Six Flags.

It’s not that the current crop of media CEOs isn’t up to the tasks they face. And it’s not necessary for them all to attain household name status. Yet the complexity of the new media/telecom eco-system would benefit from a few identifiable leaders. The tech sector rode high on names such as Gates, Ellison and Grove during its climb. Now Sergey and Larry at Google are the closest thing that Silicon Valley has to human faces.

The entertainment/communications/information sector was built on names who epitomized their companies and the business they were in: Hearst, Pulitzer, Luce, Sarnoff, Paley, Fox (William, the original studio mogul), Zanuck and the brothers Warner. Customers knew who they were back in an era which didn’t have the kind of business or social reporting we see today. Yet, these leaders were familiar “brands” and customers knew what they were getting — like it or not — from those tycoons’ companies.

Most important, they (or their promoters) created a legendary presence for themselves and their products. So did Steve Jobs.

Jobs never paid much attention to the cable industry. Unlike Gates/Microsoft, Jobs never tried to buy his way into the industry. There was once an Apple cable set-top box prototype, which may have been Jobs’ experiment in feeling out the cable industry - and then leading his company elsewhere. Does anyone think that if Apple actually produced an STB, it would carry a co-branded label or that customers would think of it as device from their faceless MSO?

There’s a lot written about business (and political) leadership these days. I’ll remember Steve Jobs as the leading representative in a world that needs more true leaders who earn public respect for what they accomplish and what they envision.

Gary Arlen is president of Arlen Communications LLC in Bethesda, MD, and a long-time interactive TV enthusiast. Reach him at GArlen@ArlenCom.com

Silicon Valley has been abuzz for more than a week about two separate approaches to TV.

Microsoft confirmed that it will introduce a TV product before this Christmas shopping season, while rumors about an Apple TV set (not just a Web-accessible set top box) escalated, with most speculation focused on delivery for the 2012 holiday season.

Among many other questions, a fundamental curiosity about these two story threads evolves: Exactly what is television?

For both Microsoft and Apple, the core opportunity is packaging and selling access to video content, including on-demand IP programs and conventional linear shows. It’s not necessarily about TV sets as we now know them.

In Apple’s case, of course, there is the possibility of an actual TV tuner/receiver, certainly achievable for a company that already manufactures (via contractors’ factories) plenty of flat-panel display monitors for its computer business. The necessary video reception components can easily be embedded behind such screens.

For Microsoft, which is fundamentally a software, not a hardware, supplier, building and selling TV sets is far less likely. That’s why the latest Microsoft TV venture focuses on using the company’s Xbox 360 game console as the access device and its poplar Kinect gesture-controlled interface as a navigation tool.

While it’s tantalizing to ponder going into a Best Buy or Wal-Mart store next year for side-by-side comparison shopping of an Apple or Microsoft TV set, that’s unlikely scenario. The current rumor mill is pointing to plenty of differentiating evidence, such as Apple’s recent patent on “no-glasses” 3D and Microsoft’s deal with Jinni for program search and discovery across platforms. Such features will make comparisons even harder at the hardware level. Microsoft’s recent alliance with ESPN3 to showcase college football games exemplifies the kind of deals Microsoft will make to line up popular programming for Xbox delivery.

Apple can build on its massive library of titles sold (rented) through its App Stores. Among the “knowing” details (i.e. guesswork) are suggestions that Apple would aim for the small- and mid-sized TV market (let’s say 20-inch monitors give or take 5 inches), targeted at dorm rooms or kitchens, and thus not competing with Samsung, Sony, Vizio or Panasonic for the main large-screen TV set in the home. Apple’s TV would run a variant of the iOS operating system.

For Microsoft, if it opts to get into the TV monitor business, it could work with Samsung or Panasonic, among others, where it already has relationships based on TV Apps and tablet technology.

On the other hand, skeptics contend that the notoriously low-margin consumer electronics commodity category will not appeal to Apple, despite the obvious embrace it would receive from fan-boys, who cannot resist any device that carries the pomaceous fruit logo.

Fueling Mircosoft’s TV initiative is the strength of its rug-top box: More than 55 million Xbox consoles are in homes around the world, and in less than a year, 10 million Kinect peripherals have flown off shelves.

In today’s fluid environment, with NetFlix and countless other broadband video sources plus the rise of TV Apps now appearing on “smart TV” sets, the looming arrival of Apple and Microsoft could become game changers - especially if their credibility encourages more viewers and Web surfers to cut or trim their cable cords.

What makes this all so fascinating is the competition or collaboration with exiting cable operations. Microsoft has been negotiating with MSOs for years, seeking in this case to let customers access programming they pay for via the Xbox receiver, not just the traditional set-top box. Apple historically disdains cable operations.

To make the upcoming year even more complicated, these Apple and Microsoft adventures into TV will come just as Google - burdened by its own failures to launch Google TV - begins to integrate its Motorola acquisition. It all gives deeper meaning to the concept of a “new TV season.”

You know how much I disdain dueling data: those commissioned research reports that come up with whatever finding fits the financial or political objectives of the study’s sponsors.

Typically, competing interests come to completely opposite conclusions from their “independent” research. Contrarily, there are the mash-up gems that emerge from studies conducted for completely unrelated purposes.

By putting together the findings, you can come up with some valuable perceptions of where we’re heading - and, inevitably, generate a reason for even more studies.

Two reports that caught my eye this week: one about digital advertising migration from BIA/Kelsey and another from Yahoo! and Ipsos about the effectiveness of mobile ads.

The BIA/Kelsey study concludes that within four years, 70% of the ad spend by small and medium-sized businesses (which includes lots of local advertisers) will go to mobile, online and social platforms. More significantly, most of those digital dollars will come from current budgets for traditional media, including cable as well as broadcast, print and out-of-home advertising.

No matter how inflated this expectation for shifting funds from old to new media, the message is clear. Cable ad sales managers should start preparing for new competitors for local ad budgets. That means begin figuring out how to bring more of those online and social media ad buys into the broadband services that cable can deliver.

The Yahoo/Ipsos study poses a bigger challenge with its focus on “recall” and “engagement” of mobile ads, including location-based messages. The study finds that ads on smartphones generate extraordinary levels of awareness and engagement. For example, when a mobile user is in the midst of shopping, mobile ad recall is 65%. More than a third of smartphone users say they’d likely buy the product being advertised. The study shows similarly high levels of ad recall for information and entertainment content delivered via iPhone, Android and Blackberry mobile handsets.

That makes mobile a tougher ad market for cable to crack, since viewers are watching a home-tethered screen. Perhaps the proposed collaborations with mobile/wireless providers will give cable operators and programmers a better hook into the growing mobile commerce opportunity.

Meanwhile, another recent piece of Yahoo research offers a glimmer of hope. It indicates that one-third of “mobile” phone time is actually spent at home, often while watching TV. As Comcast, Time Warner Cable and other MSOs are finding - and trying to exploit - split-screen attention (simultaneous viewing of the TV set and the tablet or other wireless handset) may be the best way for cable operators to become part of the inevitable mobile juggernaut.

We’ll look into that.

Gary Arlen is president of Arlen Communications LLC in Bethesda, MD, and a long-time interactive TV enthusiast. Reach him at GArlen@ArlenCom.com

Why should we believe Jean-Louis Gassée’s impressions about Apple’s plan for its interactive TV service? What’s so special about one man’s opinion about the much-hyped (much-feared?) Apple entry into the living room?

After all Gassée is merely another former Apple employee. True, he was president of the Apple Products Division in the late ‘80s and ran Macintosh development, a job previously held by Steve Jobs. More importantly, after a couple decades of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, he’s now a venture capitalist, plugged into the ideas of digital companies pursuing video projects for America’s homes.

So it’s worth paying attention to the napkin scribbles that Gassée posted this week about the much-rumored Apple iTV plan. In his blog, Gassée - and his doodles - portray several ways that Apple will offer viewers an inexpensive way to bypass cable TV subscriptions, dump their set-top boxes and still get most of their favorite programs via TV apps via an á là carte approach.

Admittedly, Gassée hedges his vision by acknowledging that Apple is unlikely to manufacture a TV set, but rather focus on its own set-top box, integrated with the apps being developed for iPad and iPhone devices. Nonetheless, he suggest that we “consider the iTV as a separate module …[that] would …’swallow’ the set-top box, DVR included.”

After examining several hybrid possibilities (including the one unveiled last year by Comcast, in which an iPad becomes the remote control and other functions for the STB), Gassée focuses on “channels as apps.” His drawings sketch ways in which handheld devices use Wi-Fi to control the iTV module.

“Not all channels will adapt equally well or equally quickly, but as ‘channel apps’ evolve, we’ll see new ways of using the medium,” he suggests. “Delivering channels as apps liberates our ‘viewing experience’ in two ways: It breaks today’s narrow channel delivery format and it bypasses the set-top box. … With channels as apps, all you need is a net connection (sometimes provided by the cable operator). You can throw the set-top box away.”

Gassée coyly acknowledges that “there’s the notorious ‘simple matter of implementation.’ Someone has to write the apps that encapsulate the channels. But once the movement gains strength and tools become widespread and understood, it will be easier than you might think. 500,000 iOS apps attest to the availability of institutional knowledge.”

At the heart of Gassée’s vision is a pay-as-you watch economic model - anathema to the cable industry, but not repugnant to the tens of millions of iPad, iPhone and Android device users today. Although he may not be channeling the precise grand plan of his long-ago boss Steve Jobs, Gassée does offer a convincing view of what’s coming next.

Gary Arlen is president of Arlen Communications LLC in Bethesda, Md., and a long-time interactive TV enthusiast. Reach him at GArlen@ArlenCom.com

Patent wars will trigger “the biggest debate two from now” in the intellectual property arena, says Christine Varney, the former Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust and Federal Trade Commissioner.

She puts patent battles into the same contentious category as piracy and privacy, and bluntly declared “Patent wars are coming,” during her keynote address at the annual “State of the Net” conference, run by the Congressional Internet Caucus.

Varney’s views on looming patent battles weigh heavily on the cable and communications industries, which are living through high-profile and expensive patent cases — with the likelihood of more to come. The much-anticipated Apple TV project is expected to have network digital video recording capabilities, according to Apple patents that recently surfaced. New Comcast patents for program recommendation engines and interactive overlays, including personalized suggestions, are being field tested.

While these specific patents may not be challenged, cable companies’ recent record of intellectual property litigation augurs a combative environment living up to Varney’s expectations. Tivo continues to sue companies that allegedly infringe its DVR patents; it has beat Dish and AT&T and has a lawsuit pending against Verizon. In an International Trade Commission ruling, Cablevision Systems prevailed against a Verizon assault regarding its use of Cisco set-top boxes for interactive TV programming. In a series of summer and autumn rulings, a federal court found that Verizon violated ActiveVideo Network patents for video-on-demand and remote control access.

Amongst suppliers of interactive services infrastructure, Invidi Technologies Corp. is accusing Visible World and Cablevision of infringing on its patents for advanced advertising technologies.

The complexity and nuances of digital technologies — and their broad deployment — promise to keep the patent issue prominent, and to feed lawyer’s coffers.

Hence Varney’s comments take on great significance. Varney, now a partner in the Cravath Swaine & Moore law firm’s antitrust practice, stressed the privacy and piracy issues - timely amidst this month’s brouhaha about SOPA and PIPA (the now-stalled Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act). But she waxed most emphatically on the patent issue.

She cited the complications of patents “in the global [landscape] where commerce knows no bounds.” Varney also insisted that patents will be “particularly problematic” and predicted that lawsuits will be used both offensively and defensively. Cautioning that “it will be very hard” for some cases, given the potential differing viewpoints “of the U.S. Congress and World International Property Organization in a world without borders.”

Varney expects that companies will aggregate patent rights, and she wondered aloud if such accumulation itself “becomes a market.” She cited recent activities in the pharmacology industry as a model for what may happen in the information technology and communications sectors.

With the clamor for “innovation” and the avalanche of “me-too” products and services, operators and technology suppliers better be ready to lawyer-up for an era of prolonged patent battles.

Gary Arlen is president of Arlen Communications LLC in Bethesda, Md., and a long-time interactive TV enthusiast. Reach him at GArlen@ArlenCom.com