George Mannes

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Comcast Hears Growing Buzz for Premium TV

George Mannes

Roberts, whose father co-founded Comcast in the 1960s, said the company was in its best financial health since he'd been on the job, though he didn't specify which particular job.

Speaking at the Smith Barney Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference, Roberts also spoke positively about the performance of advanced services including video-on-demand and high-definition television. He also took issue with some of Wall Street's financial analysis of his company's performance.

Comcast became the nation's largest operator of cable TV systems in late 2002, when it acquired systems owned by AT&T (T Quote). The operator, which now has 21.4 million subscribers to basic cable, has spent the past year cutting its debt and reorganizing operations at the former AT&T Broadband systems.

Comcast's shares rose 89 cents Thursday to close at $34.19, up 41% from the stock's 52-week low.

Divulging some details from Comcast's video-on-demand operations in Philadelphia, Roberts said half of the customers who are able to receive VOD have used the service in each of the past two months.

VOD allows users to select programming from a centralized video library and watch it whenever they choose, as if it were a virtual VCR. Comcast currently offers 2,000 hours of VOD programming; some of that programming is available for free, some comes via a monthly fee, and some is sold on a pay-per-view basis.

In addition, Roberts said VOD users were accessing the service an average of 13 to 14 times per month, up from eight or nine times a couple of months ago. Given that Comcast introduced the service only six months ago, Roberts called the uptake "pretty spectacular."

"We think this is changing the way people watch television," he said, adding later that it was not out of the question, if the company went to an all-digital network, to enable VOD in every Comcast household.

Talking about other advanced services, Roberts said that HDTV was proving especially helpful in winning customers back from satellite service. Every one of the company's major markets offers HDTV, he said, with up to 10 to 12 HDTV channels in each market.

With investors closely watching to see whether Comcast and other cable operators are losing market share in the high-speed Internet access business to telcos offering lower-priced DSL service, Roberts said the company is trying to find a balance between subscription growth on the one side and revenue and pricing on the other. He cautioned investors against "rewarding or penalizing too much just based on one metric, whatever that metric is."

"We're not looking to destabilize prices," Roberts said.

Speaking about the company's programming agreement with Viacom (VIAB Quote) announced over the holidays, and what each company walked away with, Roberts said that Viacom received "additional certainty" about the carriage of its various TV channels on Comcast, though not necessarily covering new launches. Comcast, he said, received additional high-definition and VOD content, though not, as he had desired, 60 Minutes.