Ads Help Big Easy Tourism Come Back

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(New Orleans Videos)


Cox Communications’ effort to rally the cable industry and drum up tourism for the Big Easy is “going great guns,” according to Greg Bicket, vice president and region manager for the cable operator’s New Orleans system.

So far, cable operators and programmers have run TV ads promoting the Crescent City on donated air time valued at $8.6 million, Bicket said.

More than 304,000 spots have aired all in an effort to boost New Orleans’ economy two years after Katrina wrought its havoc.

Cox is spearheading the initiative, which was announced in May, working with New Orleans Tourism Marketing and its ad agency, Peter A. Mayer Advertising.

The cable company initially had commitments from about a dozen operators for at least $12 million in donated air time.

But more than two dozen programmers have jumped on board now.

The overall program, which features spots with celebrities such as John Goodman and Emeril Lagasse, was initially projected to generate $1.3 billion in visitor spending.

Officials now expect that number to be much larger because of the additional participants, like the networks.

A new batch of TV spots was just distributed to program participants, Bicket said. Cox’s corporate cousins — Cox Enterprises newspaper, radio and TV-station group are running ads promoting New Orleans, as well.

Sandra Shilstone, CEO of New Orleans Tourism Marketing, offered a special shout-out to Bicket, for starting the initiative.

“Hotel occupancy has definitely increased, and New Orleans tourism is on a comeback,” Shilstone said. “Our restaurants, our music clubs and our hotels are rebounding. New Orleans is indeed open for business. We are very thankful to Cox Communications and all of the cable companies around the country who have been helping to spread the word that New Orleans is a great place to visit.”

Cox Asks NOLA Crew To Volunteer for a Day

As Katrina’s second anniversary nears, Cox Communications New Orleans is encouraging employees to participate in Volunteer New Orleans, an initiative spearheaded by Brad Grundmeyer, the system’s manager of public and government affairs.

Cox employees will get a paid day off in exchange for volunteering for a day this year, which translates to a roughly $130,000 indirect investment by Cox into the community, Grundmeyer said.

VNO is rallying area companies and non-profits to its volunteer program. The idea is to take Katrina’s second anniversary (Aug. 29 was the date the levees were breached during the storm) and “turn it on its head and make it a good thing, and encourage local citizens to volunteer that day or that week, to partner with some organization or the schools,” Grundmeyer said.

“We continue to encourage locals to make the week of Katrina — a week of service,” he added. “We are getting numerous hits to the site as we are promoting the community to get involved with some form of volunteerism.”

VNO ratcheted up its Web site last week, in partnership with Cox, Volunteers of America and the United Way.

Through their collaboration, people will now be able to access a volunteer-search engine via VNO’s Web site, so would-be volunteers can learn what opportunities are available and how to connect with organizations.

Copps Airbrushes Role In FCC Dereg 'Binge’

Federal Communications Commission member Michael Copps frequently bemoans the agency’s deregulatory path created for cable and other broadband access providers over the past five years. The Democrat also has a tendency — most recently in an interview with lefty blogger Matt Stoller — to blur his own role in the debate.

“The commission went off on this great binge in the last several years of reclassifying everything,” the commissioner told Stoller, in an undated but evidently recent interview available at www.openleft.com.

Put simply, there is quite bit of room between rhetoric and reality when it comes to Copps and the execution of FCC broadband policy.

Since March 2005, the FCC has voted at least four times to classify a particular broadband access provider as an unregulated information service — not as a telecommunications service subject to all those dial-up telephone regulations that were designed for the AT&T monopoly and its post-divestiture progeny, the Baby Bells.

In 2002, the FCC first deregulated cable-modem service; in 2005, telephone company digital subscriber line service; in 2006, broadband over power line service; and in 2007, wireless broadband.

Only once did Copps actually vote to oppose deregulation — and that was the 2002 cable-modem decision.

On the other occasions, Copps issued only concurrences, saying the June 2005 Supreme Court ruling in the Brand X case, which upheld the 2002 cable ruling, somehow meant he couldn’t oppose creating deregulatory parity for cable’s competitors.

But the Brand X case didn’t say the FCC’s cable modem ruling was right, only that that the agency used its authority properly in making the decision. If the FCC wanted to reverse the cable decision, nothing in the Brand X ruling explicitly handcuffs the agency.

Something else is missing from Copps’s digital debating points. The truth is that with help from fellow FCC Democrat Jonathan Adelstein, he could have stopped the “great binge” they both find so troubling.

In 2005, the five-member FCC was short one Republican, meaning Copps and Adelstein could have blocked the DSL vote. And they could have done the same a year later in the BPL vote because newly arrived FCC Republican Robert McDowell was still subject to a one-year conflict of interest cooling off period. He didn’t participate.

So when Copps and Adelstein applaud Net Neutrality mandates, they in fact had a hand in creating the alleged need.