c-span2. .. >> that's followed by a house debate featuring iowa gop congressman steve king and democrat christy vilsack. and later a forum on greater cooperation in combating the before of counterfeit prescription drugs. >> host: and joining us this week on "the communicators" is dade cohen, come cam's --

comcast's executive vice president. the last time you were on this program was april 2009 -- >> guest: sounds like an eternity. [laughter] >> host: just a few months before comcast bought a lot of nbc. do you feel fully integrated? >> guest: i don't know that we're fully integrated, but i think we feel very comfortable with the asset and with the level of integration between the two companies. they're, obviously, very different businesses, very different companies, and steve burke had a great vision going in that he wanted to bring the best parts of the comcast culture and the comcast management culture but respect the differences between the companies and the unique, you know, some of the unique approaches and cultures of nbc universal as being an entertainment and a content and a news and an information company as opposed to a distribution company. and i think, i think steve's been able to execute that balance, um, almost perfectly. in bringing the parts of the

company together that need to be brought together, but in respecting the differences between the companies and allowing the two companies sometimes to function in accordance with their historic practice and culture. >> host: you own, what, 51% of nbcu? >> guest: we own 51% now with a pathway to, obviously, owning all of it, and we are the manager of the sewer -- enterprise. >> host: do you see moving forward owning it all in ghg what we have said is we have a optionality, ge's optionality and our optionality, stated times three-and-a-half years after close, three-and-a-half years after close. but we're certainly very happy with the asset, we're happy with the company, we're happy with the combination of content and distribution, and we think maybe more importantly than our happiness, we think customers of both companies are very happy. >> host: david cohen, what are

you doing in washington if. >> guest: well with, of course, i'm always in washington, but on this particular trip i'm, we're here to celebrate the year two lawn of -- launch of internet essentials, 2.0. we obviously had a incredibly successful first year, internet essentials being the nation's largest and most comprehensive broadband adoption program for low income americans. if our first year we were able to sign up over 100,000 families, that's over 400,000 low income americans, most of them for the first time in their lives being connected to the internet in their homes. i think that sounds like a big number, i hope it does. but to size it for you, that is equivalent to the spire population -- entire population of major cities in america, cities like miami, tulsa, minneapolis/st. paul. their populations are all around 900,000 people -- 400,000 people.

l so i think when you are successful in signing up the equivalent of a major city in america for a service, you have something that is gaining traction and making sense. >> host: now, is this something that was mandated as part of the nbc deal, or is this something comcast is doing on its own? >> guest: so the answer is both. this was a comcast concept that we, um, that we were preparing before the nbc universal transaction. we offered it up as a voluntary commitment to the fcc as something to help the fcc in its public interest determination, but we would have done this with or without the nbc universal transaction. and we've obviously gone far beyond the nature of the commitment in terms of the, in terms of eligibility of the program and the speed to have project, of the product, the way we're running sign-ups, the way we're promoting it. so we are, we are certainly in internet potentials 2.0 it barely resembles the original

program we put in front of the commission as a voluntary commitment. >> host: before we go further, we want introduce amy mclean. >> i know that some of the early data you had for that program, have you got any more details as to why that is? >> guest: well, first of all, take rates are a little higher as we've gotten through the years, so over 100,000 families, 11,500 computers being sold, so that, you know, the first 40,000 we only had a couple thousand computers being sold. so the take rate has picked up. based on our research, we thought computers were going to be an essential element of this because the general research out there is that one of the significant impediments to low income americans signing up for internet service is that they don't own a computer.

the research we did of internet essentials customers is that, um, is that, um, most of the internet essentials customers said they already owned a computer. and if you think about it, that might make sense in the early days of a program because we all know that the major barrier to broadband adoption, um, particularly in low income neighborhoods is a whole budget of digital literacy, skills and issues. people don't understand the internet, they don't know the value, they're afraid of the internet. and ld make sense that early adopters might be families who already have a computer, who at least know how to use the internet. so we maybe in the early days of the program, we may just be hitting a population where the computer hardware is not necessarily the major impediment for those families. um, but we're obviously concerned about it. we keep looking at it.

we're worried about the price point, although there doesn't seem to be evidence, any evidence that the less than $150 price point has been a problem. we are worried because in the internet essentials 1.0 the hardware option was for a netbook computer, and for some people that's a great choice, but other people might prefer a desktop or a laptop to a netbook or flexible use. so we were very happy yesterday to announce a partnership with connect to compete which is the nonprofit that chairman genachowski announced last year in partnership with the cable industry including comcast. and so we have a partnership with them where internet essentials customers are going to have access to the redem tech computers that are going to be offered as part of connect to compete. those are going to be laptops and desktops. so now if you're an internet

potentials customer and you want to buy a computer for the same $199 cost, you will be able to get a netbook, laptop or desktop computer. so we hope by increasing the optionality here and increasing the choices the customers have, that we'll be able to accommodate any demand that our customers have for the hardware. >> host: are you finding that most of these customers would prefer mobile? >> guest: so that's a very interesting question. um, obviously, all of the customers we've signed up want to have a wire line connection because that's what we're selling. but there's a lot of research out there that, um, that, in fact, mobile usage, um, is even higher among minority commitments than it is -- communities than it is among white communities. i've seen some pretty startling research that, um, in some of these minority communities 70 or

80% of the broadband usage is through mobile applications. i'm not a critic of mobile broadband whatsoever. we're in the business, so no reason for me to be critical. so my comment now is not a platform comment, it's more a device comment than it is a platform comment, and that is, um, if you're going to do mobile on a laptop and you're going to get real broadband speed, so lte type speeds, i don't have any problem whatsoever. but if you go into the educational context and you're talking about mobile on a smartphone and a lot of this access to, um, the broadband through mobile devices in minority communities in particular is via smartphones, i don't view that as an acceptable substitute for, um, netbook, laptop or desktop. and i met a woman many atlanta, um, who had a son in middle school who was in an advanced

writing program, and one of the writing assignments was to edit a newspaper story. and the way you did it was at a homework site. you went on the site and downloaded the newspaper article, you edited it, and you then uploaded the edited article to the site where the teacher would have access to it, could mark it up, correct it and put it back on the site for you and your parents to see. and this was a family that did not have broadband in their home, and the woman told me she was signing up for it because of internet essentials, and when with i asked her, you know, well, what do your kids do now, she told me the story about this assignment. i said, well, how did your son do the assignment? well, he did it on my smartphone. and i looked at her, and she had tears in her eyes, and she said, mr. cohen, have you ever tried to edit a document on a smartphone? i said, well, you're talking to

the wrong person. i edited documents on my blackberry. [laughter] i agree with you, it takes very long, it's twice as hard. amy, you're a professional writer. for me in editing, i still like to see a page. i like to see the context of it, not just a sentence or two on a smartphone. and this woman got it, that smartphone access to the internet for purposes of homework doesn't work. it's not be what the, it's not what the tremendous educational enhancements that are available via the internet are supposed to work on. they're designed to work on large screens, on enlarged screens, um, you know, large screens means primarily wired connections. um, the other problem with mobile, with mobile connections is the expense. i mean, um, you'll go through 9.95 worth of data with one night's homework assignment.

so, obviously, by offering this product at 9.95 all you can eat for the, you know, for the month is a tremendously attractive option, um, for families. and i think more attractive than any mobile product that's out there. >> host: amy maclean. >> are you looking to expand your adoption efforts to other hard to reach demographics like seniors? >> guest: always under consideration. i'm a big believer in learning to walk before you run. i think, again, all the research out there says that the most important and value-added population to aim for is population of low income families with children because you get the, you get the benefit not only of the parents, but of the kids. kids are in school, you're getting the educational impact of that. we have looked at, you know, senior population, veteran population, disabled population. the problem with all those populations is they're much more

complicated to reach, eligibility determinations are more complex. the beauty of internet essentials is that eligibility is really simple and crystal clear. we have a child living in your household who's eligible to participate in the free or reduced school lunch program under the national school lunch program, you're eligible. and everybody knows that. if you were to take and say, well, if you're a senior citizen -- which we define as being over age 65, let's just say -- everyone knows whether they're over 65, but then you have to say you're at 150% or lower than the poverty level, people don't know whether they're at 150 percent or lower than the poverty level, and whether we look at tax returns, i mean, it's a lot more complicated than the eligibility that we're using for this population. >> so shifting gears, the exclusivity ban is coming up at the fcc. my understanding is the chairman has circulated an order that

would allow the ban to expire october 5th. um, some comcast networks that doesn't really matter for because there are conditions under the nbc merger, you have until 2018, but not every network that you're affiliated with, right? for instance, weather channel or a&e, or do they fall under that same? >> guest: look, i don't want to -- i know there have been a recent flurry of exparties on the subject, i'd rather just stick with our position. and you really do, and, amy, you can appreciate this. you have to start with the legislation, you have to start with what congress said. and it's amazing to me that the opponents of an effort to allow the exclusivity ban to expire have just sort of forgotten that there's actually a piece of legislation that congress passed which set out a standard that the fcc is supposed to apply. and that if you, if you look at the original legislative language and you do any objective assessment of the

marketplace, um, there is simply no remaining justification under the legislative standard for an exclusivity ban to remain in place. and if -- i don't think the chairman had a choice but to circulate the order that he circulated because, um, this chairman's been very clear from the day he arrived in the office that he's going to run a data-driven, an objective fcc, and he's going to look at, he's going to look at every policy question that comes up, he's going to assess it objectively, he's going to make decisions based upon the data, and he's going to apply the law. and if you do that in this case, there is no reasonable justification for a continuation of the exclusivity ban. so i think, i think the chairman's order as you describe it, um, is the appropriate course of action to take. um, you know, are -- and that's been comcast's position in the proceeding. um, life is long.

as you note, our order lasts until 2018. and so for whatever it applies to over that period of time, it applies to. but after that period of time, we should be treated like everybody else, um, and, again, if people believe that it is appropriate for the exclusivity ban to continue, they need to go back to congress and to get different legislation than the legislation that exists now. because the current legislation simply does not support the exclusivity ban and the current competitive posture of the marketplace. >> so what happens when october 5th rolls around and it expires presumably? do we suddenly see several exclusive contracts out there? >> guest: i don't think so. i think the fears there have been overstated, but i obviously don't know for sure. i think the marketplace now is such that the economics of many of these networks require broad distribution to be successful, and, um, you know, exclusivity

narrows distribution by definition. and to get the economic equivalence of a broadly-distributed channel when you enter into an exclusive arrangement results in an extremely large affiliate fee, and with the cost of programming being as challenged as they are today, i'm not sure what the appetite is on the distribution side, um, for extraordinarily high affiliation fees. so, um, you know, my own, my own suspicion is that certainly at least for, um, existing mature networks you're not going to see a lot of market disruption and a lot of fundamental changes in the business model. but that's just one person's prediction. i could be wrong about that. >> host: you are watching c-span's "communicators" program. our guest, david cohen, comcast corporation's executive vice president. amy ma clean is editor-in-chief

of cablefax daily. amy maclean. >> google recently raised concerns about getting some of its must-have sports program. is it something you're following closely? do you see them as a disrupter? >> >> guest: well, certainly right now we don't see them as a disrupter. we, obviously, are watching what they're doing. nbc universal has not had problems reaching deals with google fiber for the content that google is interested in carrying on the network. i, you know, the expense of the buildout of that, um, of the kansas city experiment, if you will, you know, shows, i think, it demonstrates quite clearly the magnitude of the enormous investment that the cable industry has made in building out our infrastructure across the country. and i, you know, i just don't know that i see a business model

for the expenditure of that level of money to build out, um, a national fiber network. said the same thing when verizon went into the market with fios, and at&t obviously thought the same thing since when they developed their uverse product, they decided not to build a national or even regional fiber network. so, um, we've, you know, we've consistently said and continue to belief that we're not afraid of competition, we like our product, we like our position. we think competition makes us a better company. we think it makes us sharpen our focus, improve the level of service that we're providing, improve the quality and the innovation of our offerings and just like satellite made comcast a better company and then verizon and u-verse have made comcast a better company and forced us to innovate faster and move more quickly, whatever other competitor comes along, we'll be happy to welcome them

to the fray and embrace the, um, impresumes that -- improvements that they'll make in our product and service for our customers. >> host: david cohen, when you hear the term "tv everywhere," what does that mean? >> guest: so i'll give the -- i'll start with the broadest possible definition, and then i'll narrow it a little built which is for many years we at comcast and amy will remember i talked about this in the nbc universal transaction all the time that people used to argue about whether content was king or distribution was king. it's my view that at least for the last few years it's the customer who's king, and the customer increasingly is demanding, has been demanding their con content and what i call an anytime, anywhere place. when i was growing up, you had dinner with the family on sunday night, and you went into the family room and watched wonderful world of disney at 7:00. doesn't happen anymore. maybe every once in a while for

sports, but not for post programming. and what people want to do now is they want to watch what they want to watch, where they want to watch it, when they want to watch it and on the device they want to watch it on. and tv everywhere in its broadest sense is enabling the execution of that customer vision, of being -- of giving customers the opportunity to time delay their television watching, watch it on dvr, watch it on demand, start it in the living room, end it in the bedroom, watch it on their tablet or on their smartphone or on their big screen tv. and so in the broadest thematic sense, that's tv everywhere. if you narrow, if you narrow tv everywhere a bit and you refer to the time warner, mostly time warner but time warner/comcast announcement about a model for a business model for tv viewing and what jeff pew kiss has coined tv everywhere, this is

about taking the content that customers pay for once through their cable prescriptions or their satellite subscriptions or their fios subscriptions or their google fiber subscription for that matter, and giving people the opportunity to take that tv that they're already paying for and to watch it everywhere they want to watch it and on any device they want to watch it without having to pay more for it. if you're already paying for your hbo subscription, you can watch programming live on your tv, you can watch it on demand, you can watch it -- and if you're a comcast customer, you can watch it on exfinty tv.com, on the extinty tv app. you can watch it on hbo go. so you can watch it on the programmer's site, the distributer's site. all you need to do is authenticate, that is prove you're a comcast customer, and you get access to your content on all those platforms and all those devices without paying any additional charge. and, you know, we think -- we thought at the time we made the

announcement that this would be incredibly attractive to customers. i think with to olympics we demonstrated that this is increasingly attractive to customers. the amount of viewing that took place on multiple platforms of olympic content was absolutely unprecedented, and literally millions of additional people authenticated, um, their presence in order to watch olympic content as a result of the attractiveness of the content. so i think we have developed a very customer-friendly and a very, and a very programmer-friendly model, um, to enable customers to take full advantage of the programming that they like the most. >> host: but does that concept threaten your business model? >> guest: actually, it doesn't threaten the business model. i think the beauty of the concept is that it's fully respectful of the business model. you say your business model, that covers a lot of ground for

comcast. if you say does it threaten the content business model which is a very important part of our business now, the answer is, no, because once you, once you, once our nbc universal customers are paying for the content, it just gives them access to that content on multiple platforms, makes it more valuable for them but protects, i mean, protects us from piracy and theft of the content and really protects us from unpaid views of our content. on the distribution side, that is the comcast cable side, um, it's also appropriate for our business model because you have to be a cable subscriber in order to authenticate yourself and be able to see the content whether it's on xfinity tv.com, hbo go, tnt.com, you know, nbc.com, usa.com. all the content requires

authentication, and those two things together preserve for the programmer the significant affiliate fees that cable is paying in order to enable the content to be created. so it's, tv everywhere is not disruptive to the overall, um, cable, to the overall cable tv business model infrastructure, um, in fact, it's a way to insure that the content that will continue to be a significant revenue stream to pay for the content to be produced that people want to watch. >> host: amy maclean. >> what can maybe be disruptive would be services like netflix. and i know at some point there was talk of the doj looking into online video providers and if there's any sort of anti-competitive behavior going on there. >> guest: roku is just a device.

it's not a competitor at all, a facilitator of alternative services. um, take netflix, and we could talk about any number of these. you know, generally speaking both reid hastings and brian roberts and others in the cable industry have said that they really don't view netflix as being competitive per se, um w the cable distribution model. they view it as being complimentary. and the reason for that is that almost all of the netflix content is library content. it's content that you might have watched at one point through your cable or satellite subscription but that you can't watch today through your cable or satellite subscription. so if you are, um, a, if you are a, um, let's pick a, let's pick a program. um, if you're a "law and order" fan, special victims unit fan, you've got lots of "law and

order" library content on netflix, but if you want to watch the current season, you've got to watch it on your, on your tv, um, when it comes live starting this wednesday, or you have to watch it on demand where we'll have the last four or five shows, and we'll have it available on demand. you're not going to be able to watch that on netflix. so in a way i do think it's, i do think they've complimentary because if people like "law and order: special victims unit," they're going to want to watch the new shows on nbc, and that might remind them, gee whiz, i'd like to go back and look at some of the older shows and go to netflix to be able to do that. the other -- so that's -- and i'm not, if you had reid hastings here, i think he would tell you exactly the same thing. the oh side of that, though, is everyone needs to remember in order for netflix to work, you need a broadband connection, and we're not your ther's cable

company. we don't, now we don't just go and have a, send a guy out to the house and drill a hole in your wall, run a wire and attach it to the back of the television set. we're in the broadband business just as much as we're in the video business. our view is that our broadband business, our broadband innovation has enabled multiple innovative businesses, industries, um, and product offerings to develop starting with google and, um, and amazon and ebay but absolutely including netflix. and netflix would be the first person to tell you that they can't be in business and they can't work without high quality high-speed data connections. so even if you want to watch netflix, you've got to watch it over our broadband connection, so i think it's a second way in which these are complimentary businesses and products and not really competitive. >> but there's a disconnect where netflix doesn't agree with how managed services are treated like the xbox live which goes on

your private network versus the public internet, and is that something that you're currently -- >> guest: so i don't want to get too much in the weeds, but, of course, if you read the plain english of the open internet order, the xbox service is not a managed service. is so there's probably no disagreement between netflix and comcast or anyone else about the treatment of managed services. it's just that, um, the opponents of the way in which we're treating video on demand views through your xbox, um, comcast video on demand views through your xbox is explicitly authorized in the open internet order, is not being covered by the order. those are not services that are goingover the internet -- over the internet. they're services on our private managed network, and i think it's very clear in the open negotiations and from the language of the open internet order itself that what we're doing is wholly appropriate.