Intellectual Property Law

Cable CEO: I Read Broadband Reports Before NYT

By Cynthia Brumfield

In a first for the U.S. cable industry, a cable company CEO is blogging. Michael Willner, CEO of Insight Communications, has launched a pretty well-written blog called Michael's Insight.

Although Insight Communications is a tiny cable company in comparison to giants Comcast and Time Warner, Willner is an industry pioneer who garners a lot of respect, having twice been Chairman of NCTA, the industry's trade association. Insight just finished unwinding a partnership with Comcast, Insight Midwest, which left the company with around 700,000 basic customers in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.

Not only is Willner blogging, but he also claims to get most of his news from blogs these days. In today's post he says he reads Broadband Reports, an online community that I guess is technically a blog, before he even reads the New York Times. Willner's goal is to suss out customer service problems before they hit the mainstream media and to identify potential service improvements.

We institutionalized monitoring the blogs and now regularly reach out to customers who post if we think we can help them with their issue. Indeed, we often discuss service changes and improvements that were thought of simply by reading blogs.

As to why Willner is blogging, he wants to be a part of the dialog, not the usual sentiment for a cable (or broadcast or telco or Hollywood for that matter) CEO.

When it comes to communicating with the public, most companies take the safest path. They usually play their cards pretty close to their chest. I'm joining the blogosphere to challenge that "wisdom."

With Comcast monitoring Twitter and NCTA jumping into the blogosphere and now Willner blogging (and from what I can tell, he's doing his own writing -- no PR stuff), the once-mute cable industry continues to improve on its ironically lousy ability to communicate.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).