Comcast recasts tube
Company getting personal
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"Our bet is that television is going to personalize like the Internet. And not 10 years from now -- right now," Roberts told a media conference in Gotham.
The normally low-key topper described a bold strategy that would use on-demand technologies and a deep well of content to make the set-top more user-driven.
He downplayed networks' concerns about advertising as well as observer worries over how much consumers would want or adopt new viewing modes.
Under Roberts' plan, Comcast would lead the charge by using its market share, pacts with outside tech partners and growing programming portfolio.
"I think we have the most enviable platform for people to innovate from," Roberts said.
Contrary to the fears of some execs, advertising wouldn't suffer in an on-demand model, Roberts said. In his scenario, a cabler's ability to offer customized entertainment on demand -- an old sitcom episode, or a library pic -- would allow advertisers to serve targeted ads along the lines of the paid-search model Google has built so profitably.
"We can morph the television model into the targeted, whatever-you-want world," Roberts said.
Comcast prexy was dismissive of tech-related trends that don't involve the set-top, such as video iPod viewing and TV on the Internet -- the latter of which would pose the greatest threat to cable company. "We're all going to want some form of the home theater," Roberts predicted.
Roberts did hint that the company is considering a pay TV channel featuring pics from the MGM library, in which it has a stake, which would be a step toward developing an Internet-sized content well. "It's a big part of the dialogue we're having," he said, though he declined to elaborate.
Cabler is the first to be so forthright in laying out plans to create a kind of TV utopia that would make wide swaths of programming available for a fee at a moment's notice.
With a growing stable of nets -- OLN, E! and the Golf Channel -- company clearly has a mandate to build up content, as its recent failed bid for NFL games also illustrated.
And with more than 20 million cable subs, Comcast is ideally placed to shape that living room..
Yet digital penetration -- essential for the interactivity Roberts touts -- is lower in many markets than experts feel it should be, in many cases falling under 50%. In an earnings call last week, analysts also raised criticism about the company's so-called triple play, which would make phone, Internet and cable available in one bundle and could be a precursor to the TV-as-Google model.
And the history of technology is littered with examples of failed idealism, especially when it comes to convergence. On hearing the predictions that one box would achieve all of consumers' entertainment goals, one media observer in the audience commented, "Didn't we hear all of this five years ago?"
