You wouldn’t expect a guy like Brian Roberts to spike the party punch — but in this case, the situation was really, really dire.
It all started with a former FCC policy wonk, lobbing broad-reaching, general technology questions to a panel of top media executives … who responded in kind with broad, nonspecific, stay-out-of-trouble answers.
A capacity audience at Downtown Los Angeles’ Nokia Theater Wednesday morning — most of whom were attending the Cable Show across the street at the Convention Center — was beginning its collective entry into early R.E.M. stages, despite initial excitement over a discussion event featuring media chiefs Jeff Bewkes, Les Moonves, Brian Roberts and Tom Rothman.
And it was going from bad to worse:
"You’re going to find this panel in violent agreement on almost everything," threatened Moonves to the sleepy crowd, responding to a question from former Federal Communciations Commission chairman Michael Powell about monetizing content in the digital age … or maybe it was along the lines of "operating in a media environment where the consumer has limitless choice" …
"First, let me agree with everything everybody has said here," added Bewkes, picking up the baton.
Brain waves were flatlining…
Enter Roberts.
A day after highlighting some of the benchmarks and enhancements of Comcast’s aggressive VOD strategy during a morning Cable Show Q&A, alongside former News Corp. chief Peter Chernin, Roberts again used the convention’s keynote event to highlight the functionality of No. 1 cable operator’s all-content/anytime venture, which it calls Xfinity.
Call Roberts — who believes the key to broader adoption of such a product is a more elegant, easier-to-use interface — the "Steve Jobs" of cable VOD.
In fact, not only does Roberts concede his desire to take a page from the Jobs playbook, he’s using Apple technology to do it.
Currently, Comcast offers a staggering assortment of 80,000 VOD movies and TV shows to its digital subscribers — an offering that threatens to make extinct monthly Nexflix subscriptionas among that user base (not to mention the dwindling number of trips to the local Blockbuster), given the service’s ability to deliver just about anything, at any time.
Navigating such a vast universe of on-demand content has been a vexing issue, said Roberts, who stopped the panel mid-topic to introduce the new Xfinity Remote, which is for all intent and purposes an Apple iPad with a piece of Comcast software programmed into it.
Commandeering the Nokia’s three bigscreen monitors, Roberts presented a short video, highlighting the new offering, which lets iPad-equipped Comcast digital subcribers more easily search the provider’s VOD library using key words and other search-engine-like functionality.
The crowd was awoken, letting out a palpable "awe" at one point when Roberts was showing off the elegant software menu.
"That’s been the missing link with the cable box," Roberts said. "How do you search among 80,000 on-demand choices with just a hand-held remote? At home, I don’t want to use the PC to do this, especially in bed. It’s hot and it radiates. Then, along came this device. This works with almost any existing cable box, and it puts control into the hands of the consumer."
