ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 15, 1995 TAG: 9512150037
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ANAHEIM, CALIF.
SOURCE: LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
It's more a taunt than a promise, the list of 100-plus proposed cable television channels.
From the Gospel Network to the Hobby Craft Network to Gay Entertainment Television, there's potentially something for all of eclectic America. But while viewer interest may abound, that's not enough.
After all, there's practically a ``No Vacancy'' sign on cable TV systems, still slumming in cramped, pre-500 channel quarters.
So newcomers need the allure of, say, Robert Redford. The backing of the nation's largest cable operators. And the kind of connections that make young Harvard MBA grads go weak in the knees.
Ventures like Redford's Sundance Film Channel, Nick at Nite's TV Land and Speedvision - all launching in early 1996 - end up the victors in a world of limited channel space and monolithic cable systems.
The Sundance channel, offering independent movies in the tradition of the actor-director's Sundance Film Institute, has something to equal his star power: the clout of media titan Viacom Inc.
Speedvision, which will spin its wheels with all-motor sports programming, has giant cable operators Cox Communications, Comcast and Continental Cablevision among its joint owners.
Other 1996 debutantes include BET on Jazz: The Cable Jazz Channel, which has the established Black Entertainment Television channel to help its launch; the Prime Life Network for the over-50 market; and the Ecology Channel.
The Cable Jazz Channel would be delighted with a 2 million-home reach by the end of next year, says BET executive vice president Curtis Symond.
For Speedvision and new sister channel Outdoor Life, ``we are blessed with the ownership and participation of three of the top five cable companies,'' said Roger Werner, president of the channels.
``They are providing a large platform, if you will. From their 12 million homes, we'll probably have 6 [million] or 7 million available to us in the next two years as a springboard,'' he said at the Western Show, an annual cable industry gathering in Anaheim.
Prospects seem dimmer for Prime Life and the Ecology Channel, both privately funded. Without major cable company backing, the pair earned the lowest ``survival quotient'' scores in a Cablevision magazine analysis of nine new ventures.
Bob Gordon, who spent the last eight years preparing to launch The Auto Channel, knows about survival. He says cable commitments to the venture ended abruptly when the operators invested in their own, similar projects.
``It's impossible to break into a cartel that owns both distribution and programming,'' Gordon said. Look at the new channels, he says, and you're looking at cable operator property.
Can a channel grow without major cable company backing? ``It means it doesn't happen. It's that simple,'' said Don Leahy, executive vice president of CelticVision: The Irish Channel.
CelticVision gained an East Coast toehold last March through the benevolence of Charles Dolan, the Irish-American chairman of Cablevision Systems who gave the fledgling channel access to his Boston-area system.
The channel, which also has exposure on a service that lets viewers ``sample'' various offerings, knows growth is unlikely for now. But CelticVision is not squandering its time.
``We have sought to refine the product ... with the understanding that there really aren't channels out there to be gotten,'' Leahy said. ``You have to be in the business, you have to be on the radar, if you want to be in the next round'' of expansion.
For CelticVision and others, Leahy expects that will be by early 1998.
By then, the long-promised digital compression that was to allow for the 500-channel world - although 150 is more like it - will finally make its way to a significant number of homes, he predicted.
And cable will be far from the only game in town, with the expected growth of competitive options such as direct satellite services and telephone company-delivered video.
``It's not what kind of delivery truck delivers the goods, it's the goods,'' Leahy said.
Gordon agrees. ``The great equalizer is coming and that's technology.''
He believes the ultimate answer to what he calls the cable industry's ``un-American monopoly'' is cyberspace, where every man or woman can be a programming king.
``The future, in my opinion, does not lie in the cable networks. The future is in the Internet, which is 100 percent democratic. ... Hopefully, the [cable industry] Goliath is going to get hit in the head with a stone, the stone being the Internet.''
LENGTH: Medium: 86 linesby CNB