What’s Up Atlanta Daybook Wow, CEO of What’s Up Interactive and blogger for The Lost Remote Richard Warner has scored an exclusive interview with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. The interview will be broadcast on “Georgia Business Report” tonight.
In the interview which provides more details on the upcoming Comcast TiVo deal, Roberts describes TiVo as “like a religion to some,” and clarifies that you will not need to buy a new cable box in order to get TiVo through Comcast.
Warner also questions Roberts about video on demand, the future of televsion advertising, a la carte programming, and IPTV.
In response to a question about IPTV, Roberts responds:
“I think that there absolutely is going to be technological change. And it challenges companies like ours to innovate and try to differentiate. We don?t want to just be a pipe; we want to be an experience. So, yes there is going to be more competition, no question about it. Today, we have Direct TV and the Dish Network, DSL and many other forms of competition. So our company has reinvented itself. We now are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have innovative people who are doing things like the TiVo arrangement we announced?the partnership with Motorola to get more money from electronic companies to make equipment that works with our cable. And I think we?re just scratching the surface. But is it going to be an exciting, intellectually stimulating, scary time changing period? Yes, absolutely.”
Roberts also seems to rationalize the bundling of programming vs. an a la carte model in order to foce exposure of less popular programming on to people. Roberts claims that many smaller channels would never be purchased if not bundled. It’s interesting that he points out channels like the Golf Channel, Discovery Channel and a newly announced channel called “TV One” designed for African American viewers. Of course he forgot to mention the shopping channels, the game show network and the rest of the religious programming that I could care less about.
Although I would have liked to have seen Warner ask Roberts about what current and future TiVo services that Comcast plans on not including in their new service (networking, file copying, dvd recording, home media option, etc.) he probably would never have gotten the interview if he started asking pesky things like that.
It’s a pretty good interview and worth reading. Nice job Lost Remote.