Cable Industry Tries To Distance Itself From Decades Of Poor Service By Eliminating The Word 'Cable'
from the good-luck-with-that dept
Annoyance with the cable industry appears to have reached the tipping point, with consumers fed up with skyrocketing prices, inflexible programming options and some of the worst customer service in any U.S. industry. The cable industry's ingenious solution? Stop using the word cable. Last week, the cable industry held its annual trade conference, previously dubbed "The Cable Show." Trying to distance itself from the aging, negative associations with the word "cable," the industry has decided to rename the conference The Internet & Television Expo.Former FCC boss turned top lobbyist Michael Powell "hates" the word cable and wanted to turn the page on the word's negative connotations:
"I hate the name," Michael Powell, president of NCTA, the cable industry’s trade group, said Tuesday. "It doesn’t fairly capture what they do."...This year’s trade show was renamed to "be more centered around its future as it's associated with the Internet," Powell said on stage at the conference. The term "cable company," he said, "has a proud history, but it needs to be retired."Of course when your entire business revolves around using coaxial cable to deliver Internet and television service, deciding to drop the word in the hopes of forcing a brand refresh might be an uphill climb. Most attendees of the show couldn't remember the new name, and just wound up calling the conference by the old name for simplicity's sake:
"It's called Internet something something something, right?” said Chris Gagliano, who works at Anvato Inc., which provides online video software. "I don’t even know what it stands for." Most people preferred to call it the “cable show,” even if that’s not the name anymore. "I'll probably call it that forever," said Brian Hanrahan, a regional sales manager at Optelian, which helps build broadband networks. "Until everyone else starts calling it 'INTX,' I’m going to call it the cable show."Clearly, it's going to take a lot more than a simple word change to erase memories of waiting days for the cable man or spending four hours trying to get an answer from Comcast's kafka-esque phone support system. Atrocious customer service certainly isn't the word "cable's" fault. It's thanks to a lack of competition and the resulting apathy, which by proxy results in skimping on subcontractor and support quality. Eliminating the word cable in the hopes of fixing this industry chain of dysfunction is kind of like trying to put out a forest fire by proudly proclaiming it's a walnut -- it's just not going to get to the root of the problem.
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Filed Under: cable, cable show, internet and television expo, michael powell, rebranding, the cable show
Companies: ncta
Reader Comments
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CIA tries to distance themselves from torture culture by re-branding it "Enhanced Interrogation".
Government tries to distance itself from unemployment ratios by re-branding the unemployed as "People Available For Hire".
This could be fun...
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Re: Renaming
That isn't stealing, it's "undercompensated resource reallocation".
That isn't murder, it's "problem solving".
I'm sure we can come up with lots more on both sides of the governmental divide.
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Re: Re: Renaming
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Re: Re:
> stop being awful, and change the names of the companies.
If you give them two things, they will consider it a choice. Executives will pick "change the name", decree that the problem is fixed, and continue being awful.
If you give them one thing: stop being awful
they will have to actually think about it, even if the thought of treating customers well makes the executives very uncomfortable.
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Re: Re:
Names mean nothing.
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Maybe like Blackwater, Comcast be shamed into changing that name too.
Maybe we could push a cultural name change (to differentiate it from fiber, you see.)
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Re: Maybe like Blackwater, Comcast be shamed into changing that name too.
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Xfinity
The X thing.
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Not the real problem
Can't say I blame them.
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Re:
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NCTA: National cable & Telecommunications Association
:/
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TIT Expo
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Re:
TIT-E
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I can do this too
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They're just following the trends
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Honest question
My honest question: what in the hell is a "web subscriber"?
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Re: Honest question
At the same time I do get the image of some knucklehead heading for the mailbox to look for their daily Reddit updates.
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Re: Re: Honest question
That was my guess, too, but I seriously hope not. If that's what they mean, then it shows a level of ignorance and incompetence about what the internet is that I wouldn't have expected even from cable companies.
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Re: Re: Re: Honest question
(Except for "apps", which are apparently somehow different from "online" these days. Because phone.)
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Re: Re: Re: Honest question
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1 in 200?
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Queue Jim Carrey
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I have my own term
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Cable, you've come so far.
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Having torrented with encryption 24x7...
I was envious of those who had enough pure throughput to do so. Where were these mysterious data arteries? How did they do it?
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This just in...
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