NCTA CEO Search Ramping Up, With a Few Names Mentioned

NCTA’s historic preference for having CEOs who are not former members of Congress appears to be a factor for this search, some executives said. While the association still likely will consider candidates who used to be legislators, they said, it has done well in Washington without hiring former members of Congress, and picking one runs the “risk of upsetting the ex-members, and their friends, whom you don’t hire,” said an executive. An NCTA spokesman declined to comment on the search.

Chairman Brian Roberts of Comcast, which is far NCTA’s biggest member, will be highly influential in the decision about whom to pick, said other members of the group. Cox Communications President Pat Esser, chairman of the NCTA board, is essentially acting as head of the search committee, since one has not yet been fully assembled, we're told. Managing Director Nels Olson of Korn Ferry, who led the search that led to McSlarrow’s hiring, also is managing the current hunt on behalf of that executive-search firm (CD Dec 17 p12). Olson and representatives for Comcast and Cox had no comment.

Each potential job candidate has pros and cons, and both Democrats and Republicans have been mentioned by people watching the search. Michael Powell, the first GOP FCC chairman under President George W. Bush, is seen as a strong contender, if he wants the job. Although he has worked in the private equity industry for some time, Powell is seen as having maintained relationships with lawmakers and regulators. He had no comment.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell could also be a contender, if he became interested in the job and if the NCTA and Roberts decide to pursue him, industry executives watching the search said. Some cited a recent meeting between Roberts and McDowell at which the two are said to have gotten along well, but which was an ex parte meeting where the job wasn’t discussed. Another former regulator and also a Republican like McDowell, John Kneuer, also has been mentioned by industry executives as a potential candidate. He has a strong background on wireless issues and was an NTIA administrator under Bush. Kneuer declined to comment, as did McDowell’s office.

Former Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., has been mentioned as a potential leader for the NCTA by people not involved in the search. He’s known for working well with members of both political parties, though perhaps working against his possible candidacy is that he’s been seen as having promoted policies more favorable to the broadcast industry and less so to cable operators while on Capitol Hill. James Assey, NCTA’s No. 2 official as executive vice president, could also be in the mix, some said. Before joining the association in 2008 he was the Democratic senior counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee. Assey and Boucher had no comment.

Whoever is chosen will have to navigate the sometimes conflicting interests of small and large cable operators and programmers that comprise the association, understand their needs and keep up good relationships with other associations, including CEA and NAB. “Given the fact that the largest member at NCTA is a cable operator and a cable programmer and a national broadcast network, we certainly need someone who can figure out how to balance those interests across an entire industry, and not just at Comcast,” said President Robert Gessner of Massillon Cable, which has about 45,000 video subscribers in Ohio. “I know that creates a great deal of confusion for the membership, when the NCTA is unable to respond, react or really be involved, because they have those conflicting goals of programmer, operator and now broadcast networks. So we need to find someone to navigate those uncharted and sometimes rough waters."

The professional and political background of the next NCTA chief doesn’t matter -- what does is that the person understands the cable industry and its lines of business, including broadband, and is able to address policy questions with approaches that don’t involve regulation, several members said. “I'd like to see another Kyle” McSlarrow, who had “exactly what the NCTA needed” because he had a lobbying background, said Chairman Stan Hitchcock of BlueHighways TV, a cable channel that reaches about 6 million pay-TV households. “We want our product out to as many people as possible” while avoiding the earlier pitfalls of the music industry, which had lost sales to digital piracy, he said.

"We've got a complicated industry, even for people who are within the industry,” because of the different issues faced by cable operators and programmers, said BlueHighways Executive Vice President Denise Hitchcock. Most importantly for the next NCTA CEO, “we need to have somebody in there who believes it’s better to let market forces decide the shifts in technology, rather than having regulation do it,” she said. “I don’t think we want to get the FCC into regulating or telling us what to do” about over-the-top video from the Internet that’s seen on TV sets via set-top boxes or other devices, she said. “As an industry we've got to come up with ways in which we can work with technology and move it forward.”