What's the NCTA Thinking?

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jbtombes 6/7/2016 | 1:15:34 PM

Re: It's DC The wretch is right. DC is important, esp. with a new administration and Congress, so government calendar is a factor. The Convention Center calendar is an unknown for us outsiders, but could have been critical. If you can get MSO C-level execs and their entourage, who may not go to NAB anyway, you can still satisfy some vendors. Attendance count is only one metric.

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Joe Stanganelli 6/6/2016 | 2:49:11 PM

Confidence? This could go either way. Sometimes you have to take a risk and go directly head to head with your rival. Perhaps NCTA really is feeling confident.

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inkstainedwretch 6/6/2016 | 2:23:31 PM

It's DC The point of occasionally siting INTX in DC is to invite a few key Congressman to come in and schmooze. What happens on the show floor borders on irrelevant compared to that.

The show is shrinking and there's little to be done about that. Programmers haven't needed to showboat as part of a strategy to gain carriage in more than a decade -- thus decreasing impetus to buy enormous booths (nothing new there). The consolidation among The Bigs just exacerbates that. The increasingly diverging needs of The Bigs and the much smaller MSOs that are left seems to be keeping The Independent Show relevant for that crowd.

It was wise to try to expand out of the cable-only focus, but that's been a struggle. CableLabs' raising its profile in Silicon Valley helps a lot, but not enough to salvage INTX yet.

I would expect the show to shift back to a schedule in 2018 that won't force vendors to choose between two shows they might prefer to attend.

-- Brian Santo

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Kevin Mitchell 6/6/2016 | 1:20:54 PM

INTX - productive show While I heard complaints of size of INTX, it was a great show for us. We had scheduled and improtu meetings that were high value and productive. There was solid exec level participation from big and small MSOs.

That being said, that timing in 2017 is not a good sign for the future. Will those cable execs attend INTX? Can vendors swing both events?

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