>> you are watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. .. well, there's a lot of competition ins and always has been. you know, the networks have --

the leagues have their own networks. right now, of course, there's a lot of attention being paid because fox is going to launch a new channel, fox sports one, on august 17th. nbc launched a channel, there are conference networks, turner, cws. we have plenty of competition, ask it's hostly a competition for programming rights, more talent, for advertising dollars and, ultimately, of course, for eyeball withs. >> host: so where does it go from here? >> guest: oh, i just think it gets more complicated ask more competitive, right? everybody understands that sports and live sports right now is the sweet spot of media. it is almost the only thing that you have to watch live. so that has increased its value, and i think everybody's seeing that now whether they be social media sites that are partnering with us to tweeting about sports or to show sports as we have,

show live sports on facebook. other networks, other cable networks, the league, i think everybody understands that sports rights are quite valuable. >> host: mr. skipper, when it comes to espn sports and tv everywhere, is espn available on all devices? >> guest: uh, yes it is. that is the perfect question for me, because the answer is, yes. it's available on all devices. this has been very important to us, and it goes back to live, right? if you have to watch your game live, it is best to be in your living room with a big 70-inch hd screen in front of you. but if you're in the office for the world cup, you watch it on your computer. if you're at a picnic while your baseball game's playing, you watch it on your tablet. if you happen to be in a business meeting, you might look down at your smartphone and watch the game there. so it's very important to us. we were first with our watch espn products. espn2, espn3, espnu, all

available 24/7 wherever you'd like to watch. >> host: what about the potential deal with verizon that espn has talked about where you could have live streaming, but it wouldn't count against your cap? >> guest: that was really an exploration, and we're always looking into being on top of technology, doing new things. as to whether people hitting their caps would interfere with their ability to get espn, we explored it. we've not moved forward with it. we don't anticipate anything imminent, and it's just really about our wanting to make sure our products are available to our fans. >> host: is there a price point where people will say, no, i do not want sports, i do not -- i cannot afford to pay be for sports anymore? >> guest: look, we're highly cognizant in providing as much value to fans as possible. and that's why we've aggregated the portfolio of sports rights we have. the new college football

championship is going to be on espn. all of cimp l done is -- wimbledon is on espn. all of the u.s. open tennis will be on espn starting in 2015. the british open, which is starting in a few weeks, will be on e, spn. on is and on. sunday night baseball, monday night football. there is a lot of value when you watch it on any device with, as we were just discussing. then you can check scores on your "sportscenter" app and go on espn.com and get articles. so we provide a lot of value. we think it's appropriately priced. and generally, as we survey fans and as we talk to our distributer partners, they believe it to be appropriately priced as well. >> host: what do you say to senator john mccain who has introduced again, talked about his a la carte bill? he has mentioned espn by name. what's your response to him? >> guest: our response is, of course, highly respectful for what he's done for our country. and he's often been right. in this case he's very wrong.

a la carte will not lead to more choice for consumers, it'll lead to less choice. it will not lead to less expense for consumer, it will lead to more expense for consumers because systems will be forced to raise their prices per channel. the channels will go out of business. so it will not work. this is another myth that gets perpetuated in this discussion, and that is the myth that there's an awful lot of people out there not watching espn. last week 113 million people watched or logged on or listened to or read espn. 88% of all households who get espn watch espn. so there's not a lot -- we're not a niche channel. go into any bar in the country, go through any airport, any dorm room, any fraternity house, espn is on. we're off in the backdrop for what's happening around the country here, because it's live sports. so we're not a niche channel, so that's just wrong. >> guest: let me start, first of all be, i talked about a better

user interface, simpler, more intuitive. we rolled out last year trio which is a very interesting way to see products in the window pane that brings up content in a much more progressive way that our customers love. and then in december of this last year, in december of 2012, we had a recommendation engine that tracks what you consume as a customer. you can like or dislike, and it's done for you privately and personally. you can turn it off if you want it turned off. but you on an individual level, not a household level, it knows what you like, and it starts to gather that and give it back to you. at the same time, video on demand platform at 20,000 hours of storage, we doubled the amount of storage to 40,000 hours of of storage. and thousand we're ready for the -- now we're ready for the last two pieces of puzzle. we're bringing an ip video gateway which is your device in your home that has six tuners, two terabytes of storage, and it's an ip gateway so down the

road we can start to connect it to the internet and bring apps and cop tent to your television set -- content to your television set. on top of that i said our customers want us to tib the second screens in their life. we built a tablet app that when you pick be it up, you touch it, you tell it who it is, it presents to you in three simple window panes your library, your live content and your on demand content and it's all centered around you, peter. it knows what you like, it knows nine shows right now that are on the air live that are most relevant to you. it knows what you prefer. and even in vod, it brings the stuff out of this huge library and sorts it down and brings it to the top. so immediately you have at your fingertips what you wallet. you can stop and say i'm enjoying this, but i want to see it on a bigger screen. you can send it all to the television set and enjoy it. when you set that tablet down and the next person in the

household can pick it up, and it can say, i'm pat. it moves on to the next user. very cool. >> guest: all the cable companies have been losing market share for years. what's different now is this phenomenon of chord cutting that people have been talking about for ten years, at least empirically didn't show up in the numbers until the second half of 2010. people started talking about it in the first half of 2003. but in 2010 you, there was a watershe would moment that -- watershed moment that the rate of prescription growth in pay tv dropped below the rate of new household formation. new household formation was already suppressed by weakness coming out of the great recession. but pay tv penetration growth was even lower than that. or i should say pay tv sup description growth was even lower than that, so mathematically, you had negative growth. that has only accelerated since

2010 to the point that now the pay tv universe is actually contracting in nominal terms. that is, the whole pay tv subscriber base is now contracting at a rate of about three-tenths of a percent per year. that will probably continue to accelerate even if new household formation continues to improve. and so you've got a genuine problem here that you're no longer seeing unit growth and, in fact, you're seeing unit decline. the cable companies share losses, meanwhile, are moderating a bit, but in the context of now a shrinking pie. so their numbers can't be expected to get much better in the video subscriber side. >> host: and is that all because of people going wireless? >> guest: well, for the unit growth of the industry, it's chord cutting. and i would cutting it's not the way that people think of cord cutting in -- i think the stereotype of the cord cutter is 30-something mattser of the universe -- master of the universe with a terrific computer and access to all the

digital content in the world at their fingertips. the reality of the cord cutter is quite different. the reality of the cord cutter is a lower income american that may not even have a broadband subscription and is looking at the pay the subscription as a necessary cost reduction. and they're switching not to the consumption of netflix and hulu and a bunch of online content as much as they are switching back to over-the-air broadcast tv because it's all they can afford. so you're seeing an affordability crisis, not so much a technology revolution. >> host: so finally, craig moffett, when you think about the future of tv, what comes to mind? >> guest: well, you used the phrase the future of tv, and i don't know whether tv is the right phrase anymore. it's the future of video consumptionment -- consumption. and i suspect that the old adage

in technology is everything changes less in five years and more in ten than you would ever expect. five years from now i think we're still going to be looking at a world that is dominated by the traditional pay tv packages. you know, people have waited for years to see the pay tv package blow apart, and i think in some ways that was almost -- that required a willful ignorance of the economics of the ecosystem to believe that that was going to happen anytime soon. it's starting to happen though. you're starting to see rogues around the edges not through some seismic change in the business model or technology, but through the leakage of people out of the system at a very slow but accumulating rate. over ten years that will be a very large audience that the programmers and the entertainment industry will have to address and have to serve, and i think you're somewhere in that 5-10 year range where things really start to accelerate and the traditional

bundle starts to come apart. >> host: and you're watching "the communicators" on c-span, our weekly show focused on telecommunications policy and leaders. and this week we're looking at the future of television. as we continue, we'll hear next from brian roberts, chairman and ceo of comcast corporation followed by robert marcus, president and coo of time warner cable. after that our discussion with matt polka, president of the american cable association. you said that television will change or tv video will change more in five years than in the last 15. what are some examples of that? >> guest: it's really, well, we take on demand. so we started with some content on a tv set. we now have 40,000 shows on demand. we have 30 billion downloads of on demand in ten years, but where does that want to go? it wants to go to tablets and phone, and we want to be able to

integrate the web as well as tv, as well as ratings and twitter, facebook and social media. it's just exploding because of the technology options we have as consumers and different generations of consumers have different passions. so we've got to keep it really simple to way more complicated, and we have to recognize we're not all the same, so why do we just give one experience? take the program guide. so we showed today rather than one guide, there's six guides. one just for kids, one just for sports, one just for movies, and so take the kids. you have a preschool ager or a 10 is-year-old? and we work with common sense media so parents know if they click 10-year-old, these are shows that common sense media recommends for a 10-year-old. and if you want to set your guide to do that, good luck between you and your kids to do that or to just have that information available for a conversation with your kids. if you want to take your

infinity home product which in the our case is cameras and home security, energy management and lighting control, and you want to do that with one click of your remote while you're watching tv right on the bottom, you can do that too. youyou couldn't do any of that t a few years ago, and that's the kind of change we're excited about. >> host: john mccain has talked about again his a la carte legislation. what's your message to john mccainsome. >> guest: well, i don't think we would have the diversity of channels, i don't think there would be a c-span if people would literally just buy one channel at a time. i don't think most americans, and yet how many americans are aware of c-span and have come upon it? and so, you know, if you buy a newspaper, you can't say i don't want the business section, i only want the sports section. you buy a magazine, you may not read every article. you go to supermarkets, you know, there's many businesses that give you a lot of choices. should we have more packaging flexibility and options for consumers, that's something that i think we are hopeful and we've

worked on. we've already got more packages than we've had ever before. and then finally, the question is is this the government's role, the negotiation between content companies and distributers. but my view that this is best served in the business relationships, not in government laws and mandates. but, you know, we're very respectful, it's an important subject and one that we want to, again, be part of that dialogue. >> guest: one of the areas that has been a focus of time, attention, financial resources for us is improving our navigation experience. for a long time now we've had a very broad video offering. hundreds of linear channels and thousands of hours of the on demand content. the challenge has been enabling customers to easily find that content. and what we're demoing here at the show is our next generation

navigation platform which really is a quantum leap forward in terms of discovery of the great content we've always offered. so the guide uses very rich box art, value-added metadata to enable customers to learn more about the shows that they're watching, an intuitive layout, a great search capability and what i think is pretty cool is that based on the show you may be watching, a recommendation of other shows you might be interested in. so the combination of those features really takes our video experience to a totally different level than we've had before and maybe as interesting is that the guide, the user interface, is hosted in the cloud. in addition, it's written in a programming language that is standard. in the past a lot of the cable software was proprietary to the

cable industry. the limitation that that imposed on us was that development had to be done within the four walls of time warner cable. by using standard language, we now have the ability to capitalize on really great development that is occurring outside of time warner cable. so that means there's really smart people out there developing cool apps that might make the experience viewing our video much better. so i think that's very promising. the fact that it's hosted in the cloud is also very relevant in that we can make modifications, make updates in response to consumer feedback that can happen overnight with the stroke of a couple of keys on a keyboard. in the past we had to make a major software push to literally 15 million settop boxes through the our footprint. not very flexible. so i think that the new guide, the new user interface really holds a tremendous amount of promise for what the video experience is going to be going forward. among the other things we're demoing are the next, the latest iteration of our twc tv apps.

so we about a year ago or so, a little more than a year ago launched a, an app for originally ios platforms, i as and then iphones, which enables customers to view now 300 linear channels of live video and about 4,000 hours of vod content on their iphones or ipads. rendering any screen really in the home a tv. which is pretty cool for the guest room where you don't necessarily have a tv permanently installed or if you're in the bathroom and want to use your ipad there. it's pretty cool. the really great new development, and we launched this only several weeks ago, is that a subset of that content that i just described is now available to customers outside the home on their ios devices. so we have about 12 linear

channels available, and this is really the summit of rights -- subject of rights conversations that we're having with programmers and about a thousand hours of vod content that's available for customers on the go. what we're working through now is the fact that the video regulatory regime dates back really to the 1992 cable act, and needless to say over the last 20-plus years, the world has changed quite a bit. so the level of competition we face is very different, the role that local broadcast plays in the overall social ecosystem has changed somewhat, and we think it's time to make a fresh look. so while we don't have any specific proposals that we're advocating at this point in time, we think that it's time for a renewed look at the overall regulatory landscape as it relates to video. and then lastly, the key -- and i think this is a fundamental principle -- is that we think it's critical that any

regulation or lack thereof keeps in mind that we need to be incentivized to continue to invest in the physical infrastructure that's the core of every product that we deliver. and if we're going to be a world leader in the delivery of high-speed day, if we're going to have the fastest speeds, the most capable wi-fi access points, it's key that the regulatory environment in which we operate actually fosters, as oppose to inhibits, further investment in that plan. i think there's this common misconception that once the plant is built, we're done, and then it's just there for the taking. in fact, investment needs to be continual year after year after year. we need to continue to augment the capacity of our plant so that it's capable of dealing with an ever increasing amount of traffic and an ever increasing demand for more speed by our customers. >> host: so would you be in favor at this point of a comprehensive rewrite of the '96

telecom act? >> guest: yeah, i hesitate to say that, but i think we certainly need to take a fresh look at in elements of the telecom act to insure that the provisions that do survive are ones that are reflective of the current environment which certainly is very different from what existed at the time it was written. >> host: what's the future of video when -- video services for your company? >> guest: that's a very good question when you look at many of the problems that are occurring in the marketplace today. as i said, you know, our members' his is -- business is focused ahead on broadband. the services we provide are going to be broadband based. consumers are going to want to consume more video through broadband, through online services as we see now. in fact, we have many members that are actually engaging in allowing their customers to see more online viewing via their broadband plan. the issue of the video business and where that goes, i think you'd probably have to ask the

big content companies about that, because they're the ones that are driving the business today. from our members' perspective, we believe that the video marketplace is broken. as you can look at any number of disputes that are occurring today in the news whether it's cbs/time warner or any number of other programming disputes. in fact, i just saw something the other day where amc was claiming that several smaller cable operators were going to be dropped from some of their services because these smaller cable operators, unnamed, weren't agreeing to the prices amc demanded. and it all comes down to consolidation and bundling, it really does. and unfortunately, consumers are starting to move more towards online viewing because they say i don't have any choice as a cable or a satellite subscriber, and i want more choice. we as cable and broadband providers want to give consumers those choices, so we're trying to work with them and give them the choices that they want. but it's a huge issue. one that's not resolved.

it's only getting worse. and, frankly, you know, i can tie this all the way back to 1992 when congress first implemented the retransmission concept rules, and i can draw a line from that through the begin beginning of consolidation with the programming business to now we have of a situation that exists where these four major content companies across the country tie in bundle services, they pay exorbitant amounts for sports rights, for the right to provide sports that every consumer has to pay for whether they watch or not. our members tell us that only about 30% of their customers are real sports fans that are real diehard that would pay for it. the other 70% could take it or leave it. in fact, they tell us, why do i have to take all of this content? so it is a problem that's continuing. many have predicted the demise of the video industry the way it is today with wholesale programmers, content companies selling to cable and satellite operators. in my view, when that happens,

there will only be one party to blame, and that's those that own the content. >> host: and this week on "the communicators" we're focusing on the future of television. at the ces international show in las vegas earlier this year, we caught up with jost taylor -- joseph taylor, ceo and chairman of panasonic. while there, we also spoke with david steel, the executive vice president of samsung. those two interf interviews are next. >> guest: your tv is the latest innovation. people want their content the way they want it, when they want it. they want to be able to communicate with each other, they want to use twitter, they want to see youtube, they want to shop. we're enabling that in a custom fashion on your tv. so we use facial recognition and voice recognition. you walk into a room and you say my tv, and immediately the screen shows your home page. it's really the coolest thing. >> host: is it on the market?

>> guest: it will be on the market this spring. >> host: 4k. oled. what do these terms mean? >> guest: so 4k is the latest innovation in terms of high resolution. 4k's really simple, it's four times the resolution of what you have on your hd-tv at home. it's got the same qualities as digital cinemas that you've been visiting around the world. when you go see a movie, that's 4k resolution. we can wring that into your home. oled is another technology for displays. so we had crts for many years, those are the old, big old boxes, right? then the next one was plasma, led, lcd. the next is oled which is much more organic. in fact, o stands for organic led. and it's literally paper thin, and we can bend it. it's also the most amazing thing. you have to go over to our booth and see it. >> host: when you say organic,

what do you mean? >> guest: we use a phosphorous readier than semiconductor as an activating agent. so it's much greener. much lower energy consumption than any display on the market. >> host: joe taylor, what happened to 3-d? is 3d television successful? it was all the rage here last year. >> guest: i don't think anything happened to it. i think 3-d is still developing. there's more and more content coming out all of the time. i think the biggest impediment to 3-d still remains the glasses, and i think as 4k develops, i think the future for glassesless -- that doesn't even sound right, 3-d without glasses, how about that? that future becomes more imminent. and i think then you'll really see an explosion in 3-d. >> guest: well, the future of tv means what it's meant at least the last few years, certainly, which is getting bigger. used to be that we would say

40-inch was about as tvs would go in the home. now we're seeing the fastest growing part of the market is 60-inch and above. we're showing here at the booth 85-inch and 110- inch ultrahigh definition tvs. so we see still the continued growth of large screen televisions this the home. these consumers have warmed to the scale of big screen tvs and the great entertainment. we also see the growth of smart tvs. tvs used to be separate, unconnected devices just with an antenna or cable connection. you increasingly they're internet connection. more than 60 % of our large screen tvs are being connected to the internet. so that means the tv becomes a connected part of the home. access to all of your video services through apps, access to content on other devices in the home so you can link your tv to your smartphone or to your tablet as well as even social media.

so you're sitting back on your couch watching a tv program, you don't want to miss your social media -- [inaudible] you can get those on your tv. so certainly in the next few years we'll see big, big growth in smart television. >> host: a lot of talk, though, about tablets and wireless and tv everywhere. how does samsung fit into that picture? >> guest: so as you might expect from samsung given the breadth of products that we have -- smartphones, tablets, televisions, computers, appliances -- one of the areas we're investing a lot is this multiscreen connectivity because we already see many consumers multitasking. you're on your couch watching tv, but you're also texting on your phone be, or you're also looking at the internet on your tablet, manager like that. so how do we link those devices to each other, how do we also link them to the cloud or link them to the internet. one very good example is our galaxy camera. so we launched the samsung galaxy camera last year.

a camera now built in with 3g and 4g connectivity. so you can take photos where you go and instantly through the wireless network upload them to a web site or to a social media service bringing wireless connectivity to a camera. so linking products like that, linking them to the internet and to each other, that's a big opportunity for us. we expect big value for the consumer. >> host: and you've been watching "the communicators" on c-span. now, we've been showing you short portions of interviews that we have done. if you would like to see the full discussions from this program or other interviews that we've done, go to our web site, c-span.org/communicators. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider.

>> the world is on fire, and things are moving extremely fast. my education expires after five to ten years. five to ten years and everything is new. the cloud is new, twitter is new, google is new. historically, what we've done is we slice human life into, basically, four or five slices. the first is the fife years, then a learning phase, a work phase and a kind of resting phase afterwards and maybe eventually dying. but what i think we should be doing is have them all at the same time. we should play, we should learn, we should work and rest at the same time because the world moves so fast today, we can't really afford having a -- [inaudible] anymore, we really have to stay up-to-date. of. >> new year's day on c-span, just before 1 p.m. eastern and throughout the afternoon ceos of udacity, twitter and others on the future of higher education, products and data as the new industrial revolution on c-span2's booktv,