Roberts Is Under Siege

Cable stocks have
gotten so bad that even institutional investors that don't normally complain are calling for the ouster of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.

Brian Roberts. The guy who a couple of years ago was being hailed as the smartest guy in cable. The guy who grew his father's company from a 3 million-subscriber regional operator to the 24 million-subscriber powerhouse it is today. The guy who convinced Bill Gates to invest in cable.

Chieftain Capital Management, which owns about 60.5 million Comcast shares (2% of its outstanding stock) sent a letter to Comcast Jan. 14 claiming that it is Roberts' leadership (or lack thereof) that has sent Comcast stock into freefall in the past year. Granted, Comcast shares dropped 35% in 2007 (the entire cable sector was down 28% for the year). But can you blame that entirely on one man? Apparently Chieftain can.

“We strongly believe that it is time for change,” Chieftain said in the letter. Later, the investor said, “we want and deserve the best CEO Comcast's board of directors can find and, based on his record, Brian Roberts is not it.”

Comcast's reply: The company's performing well, it welcomes input from shareholders and, though it's had disagreements with Chieftain in the past, it will review Chieftain's suggestion and respond in due course.

Removing Roberts would be a tough row to hoe. Through super-voting shares, the Roberts family controls 33% of Comcast's total vote, although it owns about 1% of its equity. That means that the Robertses could block a move with just a few big shareholders on their side — say Dodge & Cox, which owns 11.4% of Comcast, Gates's Microsoft (7.6%), Barclays Global Investors (6.5%) and Marsico Capital Management (5.3%).

This letter follows a spate of shareholder lawsuits claiming Comcast management knew it would have to reduce guidance for 2007 long before it did in December.

Suddenly, people want to tear down Brian Roberts.

Even though:

Putting money in the stock market does not always guarantee huge returns.

Comcast stock was up more than 60% in 2006, so anybody who invested then is still ahead.

The “best” cable stock last year (Cablevision) lost 14%.

Schleiff's New Role: Actor

Watching a pre-release screener recently of the upcoming HBO biopic Bernard and Doris, we couldn't help but wonder: was that the CEO of some other network we saw moonlighting in the premium service's movie?

Watch closely in the scene where Doris Duke (Susan Sarandon) reigns over a meeting of her foundation board. Yep, it's Crown Media CEO Henry Schleiff.

Asked about his side gig, Schleiff was typically self-effacing. (Not!).

“There's been a great outpouring of support to change the name to Bernard and Doris and Henry. The rule of threes … it's a much better title,” he deadpanned.

Actually, Schleiff is a friend of the film's director, Bob Balaban, who called and asked the exec to come in and play an exec. It was kind of like old home week, Schleiff said. While chief at Court TV, Schleiff worked with Balaban on a project called The Exonerated, which included Sarandon among its stars. Also in the board-room scene as an extra: writer Dominick Dunne, of the Court TV series Power, Privilege and Justice.

Uncharateristically, Schleiff was silent in his scenes. But he assured us he actually made an impassioned speech about the importance of Hallmark Channel that ended on the cutting room floor.

But seriously folks: “It was a wonderful day and a half on the set,” Schleiff said. “Great company.”

Looong Shelf Life for Analog

Parlor game at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers' Emerging Technologies conference in Los Angeles last week: How long will analog cable TV channels stick around?

After all, you can't even buy an old-fashioned analog TV anymore. Those big, fat analog signals that suck up a whole 6 Megahertz of spectrum are just a waste, right?

Hold your horses there, Philo T. Farnsworth.

“Personally I believe there will always be analog channels — 30 years from now there will still be analog channels,” Scopus Video Networks chief technology officer Adi Bonen said, responding to question posed during a panel discussion. As cable implements new bandwidth-optimization techniques like switched digital video, “there will be enough spectrum to do everything we need to do, so why eliminate anything?”