Cable guy: Roger Keating is leading the local division of Time Warner Cable as it takes over operations of Adelphia and Comcast in Los Angeles.ROGER Keating is the point person for the biggest overhaul cable television ever seen in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. : Time Warner Inc.'s $17.6 billion acquisition of Adelphia Communications Corp.'s assets. As part of the complex deal, Time Warner Cable This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. will take over the neighborhoods being serviced by Comcast Corp. Time Warner Cable now faces the challenge of meeting its pledge to improve customer service while serving practically the entire city of Los Angeles
The antitrust laws apply to virtually all industries and to every level of business, including manufacturing, transportation, distribution, and marketing. They prohibit a variety of practices that restrain trade. grounds. Question: So how long will it be before Comcast and Adelphia customers notice they have a new cable provider? Answer: We won't be shy, we'll make our presence known. Through this transaction, we'll pick up a lot of facilities, and our first focus will be on things customers will notice. Certainly, our vans will be branded and all our personnel have new uniforms. We'll be purchasing ad time to talk about our products, in newspaper, radio and TV. Time Warner has only served a portion of L.A. and it's never been economic to do that before. Q: Will viewers notice anything different? A: The biggest thing they'll notice is that we'll be in the phone business, so they'll see ads in the media for our three-way bundle of video, phone and Internet, which we'll be promoting heavily. When you turn on your TV, there will be some programming changes, some additional channels, and some channel moves. It's too early to say what specifically. The Adelphia and Comcast names will no longer appear on your bill. The menu guide will have at the minimum branding changes, but they'll likely have more features. Q: So what are you are doing to prepare for the change? A: We're doing a lot of planning in the background, without having to interact with Adelphia and Comcast. We're figuring out how to describe and package and sell all our different tiers and products. Adelphia has one analog tier and two digital tiers, and we have analog plus four digital tiers. We're doing a lot of meetings with city council members, city franchise managers and communities. Q: What's going on What's Going On is a record by American soul singer Marvin Gaye. Released on May 21, 1971 (see 1971 in music), What's Going On reflected the beginning of a new trend in soul music. in these meetings? A: The franchise transfer process is not perfunctory per·func·to·ry adj. 1. Done routinely and with little interest or care: The operator answered the phone with a perfunctory greeting. 2. Acting with indifference; showing little interest or care. . It opens up the process to other issues, so in some cases, a city or county might invite public comment, they may revisit re·vis·it tr.v. re·vis·it·ed, re·vis·it·ing, re·vis·its To visit again. n. A second or repeated visit. re the fee structure. By nature it's a political process, times 170 franchises. But the franchise transfer is like assuming an existing contract. There are some very clear rules about how they can be transferred. Q: What about layoffs? A: All of the front line personnel either operating the phones or working on the plant will get hired. I wouldn't want to make sweeping statements about layoffs. But even after we pick up the people from Adelphia and Comcast, we'll be adding new services so we'll be growing our total employee base. Q: Do you plan to raise rates? A: We're looking at pricing locally as we figure out how to package and sell our products. It would be inappropriate to coordinate pricing before the deal closes. We don't want to have three different sets of prices. We don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. if they'll go up or down. For the lowest-priced basic cable package, it's regulated by most communities, so that makes it hard for us to raise prices. Q: Will Time Warner be petitioning to have the market deregulated the way other cable companies have done because of the growing level of satellite subscriptions? A: We have petitioned for "effective competition" (becoming deregulated by proving that satellite TV subscriptions are above a certain percentage of the community) in some areas but not in others over the last few years. There are 170 franchises here, and we look on a case-by-case basis to see what the satellite penetration is. Q: Adelphia has had a reputation of being a technological laggard. Have you found this to be true? A: Until we actually take possession of the assets, we really won't know how big of an effort it will be to remediate re·me·di·a·tion n. The act or process of correcting a fault or deficiency: remediation of a learning disability. re·me the plant. But we will grow to more than 5,000 strong when we pick up the assets of Adelphia and Comcast. So there's a lot of people out there in the field in trucks working the lines who will be able to direct us to in the process of remediating the plant. This is not rocket science rocket science n. 1. Rocketry. 2. Informal An endeavor requiring great intelligence or technical ability. . Q: Can you be more specific? A: We measure signal levels, strength, stability and other factors at various points along the physical distribution plant. One of the first things First Things is a monthly ecumenical journal concerned with the creation of a "religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society" (First Things website). we'll do when we pick up these assets is an exhaustive scrub to understand where the plant performs well and where it falls short. And where it falls short, we'll repair and upgrade the plant. We know that there hasn't been the level of service and quality that customers have come to expect. Q: If it's not rocket science, what went wrong at Adelphia? A: This may sound strange, but I'm not altogether sure. I am not and was not inside, so I'd hesitate to speculate on what went wrong. I do know what one has to do to make it right. Q: There are fears Time Warner will become too powerful in this area. A: The customers are the beneficiaries of us having more resources. Offering more local news channels or on-demand local programming has huge fixed costs fixed costs, n.pl the costs that do not change to meet fluctuations in enrollment or in use of services (e.g., salaries, rent, business license fees, and depreciation). . We couldn't do it if we have 20 percent of the market, but we can if have 80 percent of the market. Q: Do you have an example? A: We were the first cable company in the country to distribute an L.A.-based startup called Si TV early this year, a network that targets English-speaking Hispanic culture Hispanic culture is a term used to identify the culture found in Spain and in the countries that were part of the Spanish Empire, including Mexico, Peru and other countries that were formerly part of New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru. . We started distributing ImaginAsian TV this month, real-time and on-demand, that offers programming in six Asian languages. Having more resources also means that we can offer media from segments that are big in L.A. but underrepresented un·der·rep·re·sent·ed adj. Insufficiently or inadequately represented: the underrepresented minority groups, ignored by the government. in the media, such as holistic and Eastern arts. We offer on-demand content from Oasis, which is based in L.A., with programming on things like yoga yoga (yō`gə) [Skt.,=union], general term for spiritual disciplines in Hinduism, Buddhism, and throughout S Asia that are directed toward attaining higher consciousness and liberation from ignorance, suffering, and rebirth. . Q: What about new services? A: We'll have more video-on-demand, not just for (movies), but for TV programming. Satellite, our main competitor, doesn't have the ability to offer on-demand services because of the way their technology works. You'll be able to get these products separately, so you can get unbundled services. If you get them together, it will bring significant savings. Q: What about public access? A: Public access won't be changed with this transaction. Whatever public access is embedded Inserted into. See embedded system. in the franchise agreement, we'll be bound to honor. Q: How did you get into the cable business? A: No one thinks they'll end up being the cable guy. After college, I went into strategy consulting for five or six years in Washington, D.C. And when I got tired of it, I asked myself which one company I enjoyed working with the most out of 20 or so companies. And it was the cable company, Comcast. They hired me to run their cable properties in Western Florida. It was when Comcast was just emerging as a large cable company. Q: Is there any crossover Crossover The point on a stock chart when a security and an indicator intersect. Crossovers are used by technical analysts to aid in forecasting the future movements in the price of a stock. In most technical analysis models, a crossover is a signal to either buy or sell. between cable and industrial engineering? A: A lot of disciplines from industrial engineering are coming into play at cable companies. You use a lot of statistical quality control. We have a very similar process to make sure that orders for requests are being managed properly in our operations so that things get done on time. Q: But the cable industry has a reputation for having the worst service around. A: We talked to a customer a couple of years ago who had a bad experience, and we had to come back a second time for service. The customer said, "You really should apologize." We thought about that. So now anytime something breaks down and we have to send out a truck again, we apologize. That led to a program where we send a box of cookies every time there's a repeat service call. Q: Do you often send out boxes of cookies? A: We do. We have 350,000 customers, so we do have to return to a home sometimes. It might not have been our fault, but that doesn't really matter to the customer. Roger Keating Title: Division President Organization: Time Warner Cable, Los Angeles Born: Berkeley, 1961 Education: B.S., industrial engineering, University of Notre Dame Notre Dame IPA: [nɔtʁ dam] is French for Our Lady, referring to the Virgin Mary. In the United States of America, Notre Dame ; M.B.A., Stanford University Stanford University, at Stanford, Calif.; coeducational; chartered 1885, opened 1891 as Leland Stanford Junior Univ. (still the legal name). The original campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. David Starr Jordan was its first president. Career Turning Point: Doing a ride-along with a cable truck and visiting customer homes Most Admired Person: Wife Hobbies: L.A. city life, surfing Personal: Lives in Los Angeles, married, expecting first child |
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