," doug herzog and kevin leddy discuss their companies and developments in the television industry. >> we welcome it doug herzog at the cable show in chicago. tell me about your job, first of all. >> i think i have one of the best jobs in television, certainly a perfect job for me. i get to oversee three brands that i am passionate about. i would be of your of them if i did not work there. i get to work with -- i would be eight four of them if i did not work there. -- i would be a viewer if i did not work there. i can move from one thing to another quickly. all the programming and marketing aspects and business

aspects, it is just a lot of fun. i love managing the process and managing people and most of all these great friends. >> we are sitting right across from your booth here. tell people the three channels that you manage. >>, a central, -- comedy central, spike tv, and tv land. they are three distinct channels with three distinct brands and three distinct audiences. comedy central is targeted generally too young men and spike is targeted to men slightly older. tv land is more for adults. comedy and despite have a little crossover and they are both going for guys --, the and it spike have a little crossover. >> you have been in the business for a long time now.

>> 30 years this year. i was just talking to my colleague about the first show i ever went to. it was the then fledgling cable news network. >> you keep hearing as you walk the floor about the explosion in the merger of the internet and traditional television, whatever that is today. how do you hope to exploit that, as all of these services integrate? >> that is the question on everybody's mind. that is the question we are discussing every day, endlessly. i am pretty certain that the answer is, it all revolves around original programming. none of these platforms mean anything without programming and without content. whether you are a cable operator

or a satellite dish to be 2 or netflix or hulu, your going to need content. as long as we can continue to create great, compelling content, ultimately we will be okay because that is what people want, and they want more of it than ever. they want it when they want it. how that it figured out and how we all make money doing that -- the key is creating the content and i have to agree with senator redstone that content is king. >> you have built brands for 30 years and somewhat established ways. when you look at the amount of choice available and the multiple platforms, how are you perceive that you'll be able to establish new brands going forward?

>> i think the established brands will be paramount in helping to establish new brands. the broadcast networks have turned into foster channels. i feel like comedy central, spike tv, mtv, espn, cnn, whoever is, we still have the reach and the power to market in a way that really cannot be challenged at this point. >> so " loyalty of your stablished viewership allow you to have the advantage? >> that is probably not the only way to do it. there will be those guys who break out of the pack of millions, the barrier for entry on the internet is not very great.

it is like panning for gold. there will be some things that break out over time, something great will happen there and explode up, but it will not be everybody. and then there is the competition. the broadcast networks are still hanging around. >> there are growing pains, intellectual property challenges, contract issues being fought out. the assume that we will get past these growing pains, or will they get more complex? >> pitbull the feed them on an issue by issue basis. it feels to me like every day you wake up and there is a new issue. new platforms bring new issues. i feel like that is an ongoing evolution. it felt like there wednesday --

there was a period of the last 15 years were we understood where everything was going and where it was going to be, and at some point it exploded on us. that will be going on for the next couple of years, a lot of disruptions. i think we will get there. this is an industry with great leadership and a lot of smart people doing a lot of smart things. i feel like the right steps are being taken, and no one is writing off -- running off in a way that puts everything in jeopardy. >> what about the comcast purchase of nbc, how has it changed the competitive landscape for you? >> in terms of how we approach them as distributors, which is a relationship with them, we are going to assume that we will continue to have the kind of relationship we have had over

all. we are a pure content company and we are comfortable with that. that is what we want to be. they have a lot of moving pieces, but we will keep on doing what we are doing. we should be able to maintain the relationship we have had with them traditionally. that might look at the world a little differently. we will see how it manifest itself over time. in terms of how we view ourselves, it is not a great change. >> now that they have programming services they are responsible for draw-- >> if you continue to do what we have done historically, give the people what they want.

>> you made reference earlier to netflix and hulu. what is your view about what their game plan might be and how it would affect you? >> right now, we are just taking it one step at a time. looking at things short-term, we will see what happens down the line. as a programmer, i am more concerned if they are going to be competing with me in terms of making original programming one day, on that level. that is something we talked about quite a bit. in terms of how we view them as a distributor, we take it one day at a time. we have tremendous relationships in the satellite and cable community. those are very important to us and a big part of our business.

where they end up remains to be seen. >> how concerned are you about piracy, particularly on an international basis, and what are you looking for from washington in that regard? >> period the pictures has been a real leader in terms of how they are out there pursuing people who infringe on their copyright. viacom is leading the charge. it has been a little bit like finding a leak and plugging deduction and a new ones brings up. we are diligent about it, and it has to be conquered and managed boeing board, making sure everybody gets paid for this contents is business. -- and managed going forward.

>> what is your message to nielsen about getting with the program, being able to understand where things are? >> the audience is clearly beginning to use and interact and via our contact on various platforms in various different ways. it is incumbent upon us and ultimately nielsen to make sure we get credit for that. that is how we are going to keep this business healthy and vibrant and continue to invest in our programming so we can make more content. >> there is lightning fast speed and program announcements, and also the connection with facebook and other social platforms. what does that mean for you with

regard to social media services and how they help you expand? >> that is incredibly exciting. across all our friends across the company, we are great fans and users of social media and we see it as an enormous tool in order to market what we are doing and communicate with our audience and have a back-and- forth dialogue with our audience. whether it is a paramount fix -- pictures feature or a show we launched last night on tv land which utilizes facebook and twitter, etc. the audience is very much engaged with the processes. i think it is a great tool. i find it fascinating as a consumercomedy central -- i find

it fascinating as a consumer. we are less now about billboards and print magazines and more so online at in social media which is where that audience is, particularly young guys. >> over your shoulder is a very large picture of jon stewart. >> he is large on my show at all times. >> last summer, our network carried the stephen colbert-jon stewart rally on the mall in washington. talk to me about your network plans to be involved in active in the coming elections. >> is something of great interest to jon and stephen and their audiences. we have this in the annual --

biannual thing we call in decision. our next round of in decision is coming up. that is what we call our coverage. they have become very important stops for a lot of people who are looking to send a message. despite the fact that we are a comedy channel, they will be right in the thick of it. we are not a news organization. we are there to make people laugh and take a look at the world and ultimately make fun of it. that is what they will be doing, but we look forward to it. having an election year on comedy central is our equivalent of an olympic year. we get a lot of attention. more viewers watch us because they like the olympics.

it is a good time for us. >> you have a new book coming down -- there is a new book coming out. are you concerned that a gop house or the people that follow them might bring it up as an issue in an election year? >> i am not sure i agree with them completely. it is a very specific view. whether it becomes an issue in the election, it is hard for me to imagine, with everything going on in the world that that is where people will focus. only time will tell. >> since you are talking to c- span, tell me about your concerns about washington and how they might affect your business or what messages you might have to watch their. >> i am not sure i have anything

i would specifically say to washington, except it is a complicated area that we are moving into in terms of talking about all the new platforms, all the disruptions and all the issues facing us. we have had a tremendous relationship over the past 30 years and have helped this industry build itself up to the place where it is today. we are not done yet, and we certainly look forward to their partnership and cooperation and support going forward, and taking this industry to the next level over the next 30 years. >> doug herzog, congratulations on your award and thanks for spending time with me today. we are on the floor of the 2011 cable-tv convention in chicago with kevin leddy, who has been in this business for more than 30 years.

it is hard to be reminded of all the time going by. because of your perspective about how the business as changed over the years, give me a snapshot of where it is as a business right now. >> it is certainly a terrific business for time warner cable. we spun off from time warner a couple of years ago. the stock price is up to 100% since we spun off. the virtual business is going great. it is a great time to be in cable. >> tell me about your specific job. >> i have a link the title which is executive vice president of technology policy and product management. in my real day-to-day responsibilities, i have to help create a long-term technology strategy for the company that supports all the new products and services we want to introduce over the next two

years. >> time warner made a lot of headlines this year when you announced your new application for ipad. what is the goal of that and where is it in its deployment? >> the ipad at up --app is a much larger gold. it concept on any device, anywhere, anytime. we have made great progress against that strategy over the last few years. one of the key enablers of the strategy is better navigation. that better navigation can either come from improvements to our set top box, or using consumer electronic devices to navigate the content. we are pursuing growth, improving navigation on our set tops by building a high-speed

data pot to those set tops so they can do function to access. you can do search functions more easily and download better graphics and have a better digital experience on the set top. the other half of that strategy is the use of consumer electronic devices. ipad has tremendous capability. the processor gives it a lot of graphics capability and beautiful visual display. folks can use an ipad to view our content, but more and more they will use ipad to navigate the content that is available to them. they will have a better guide available through the ipad. you'll be able to use your ipad as a remote control and find what you want more easily. >> are you talking ipad specifically or is that a generic term for tablets?

>> we started with ipad but we will serve a lot of other tablets. we worked with samsung on their galaxy tablet. andill expand to i've owns -- will expand to i phones and droid phones. >> sense lawns, you already have 360,000 people who have signed up for the ipad app. does that exceed your expectations? >> yes, it did. some of those down laws are outside -- downloads are outside of our footprint. a very large percentage of the people who have a ipad or

downloading our application and they are using it more and more all the time. we only have 80 channels on it today. we don't have a local broadcast channels available and we do not have a lot of sports programming. as we add more sports and local broadcasters, we expect usage to go up quite a bit. >> it or the second largest affiliate for c-span. it has not been without problems. a lawsuit from viacom and disney has raised concerns about having its products under your current contract negotiations. are you concerned about these initial issues on content, the providers part? >> no, i cannot speak very much about that issue because we are in the lawsuit, but we believe we have the right to screen content on a customer's premise. it acts like an additional

outlet for any other screen in the house. >> expect that the industry will come to resolution over time. one of the things people are talking about here is monetizing this in a way that you can capture of the number of people using the service for advertising purposes. how do you see that progressing? >> i think we need to report the viewership. we are working with nielsen for an application that would prove borat -- that would report that viewership. >> is the technological solution from nielsen? how do you see that being addressed? >> i am not sure. i think the most rate for rethink to do would be have nielsen download an application and monitor that usage. >> broadband is going to be the major business for time warner

in the years ahead, that you can even see yourself being able to serve on broadband customers only. talk about that strategy. >> i think video is still the foundation of our business. we need to continue to improve video. it is the main reason most of our customers have their -- have our services in their home. we will do everything we can to remain competitive with bdo offerings. there are some customers, for example direct tv, who get their video from somebody else and use our high-speed data for internet access. we will enable that out of our 14.5 million customer relationships. 2 million customers only take high-speed data from us already.

>> you get a panel session on smart navigation. can you talk a little more about that concept and how it is progressing? >> a lot of it comes back to something i was talking about a minute ago, using cloud based computing to enhance navigation. we have always been constrained by the capabilities of the set top box, which have good processors but relatively limited graphics capabilities. if we can start to access servers at the head in, we can do much more intelligent navigation and give customers more information about the programming they are doing. we can start to do recommendation engines like amazon in recommending books to you.

we will enable that if you want the recommendations for programming. we will also get a lot better graphics. you will see dvd box art. >> a lot of that intelligence comes from the use of cookies, or being able to track people's preferences. that gets into the whole arena of privacy. people are worried about how much of their own preferences are being stored. how are you approaching that with regard to providing the services, all customers are more and more concerned about privacy? >> i think the cable industry is extremely careful about privacy. part of the regulations that govern our industry have talked about privacy for years. we have always been very, very careful about it. if we provide a recommendation engine for customers, it will be on an opt in basis.

>> do you foresee the day when there will no longer be set top boxes at home? >> yes, that is the other half of what we are demonstrating here at the show this week. we have our services streaming directly to a samsung television and a sony television. the television manufacturers are creating what they call connective tvs or smart tvs. it is similar to the ipad. we can create applications with our navigator tune download to a television. today we are streaming 80 channels in our demonstration, the same 80 channels going to the ipad are also going to the samsung television. the television can also access the content that is stored on the d e r --on the dvr in the

customer's home. the sony television is accessing our video on demand. >> where is all of that integration and innovation originating? is it the consumer electronics manufacturers? is that a working group that brings all the parties together? >> we are broken very competitive industries. trying to work out those partnerships is difficult, but individually, we can partner and work these things out. we are working with sony and samsung directly, but i cannot imagine they would want to sit down together and work these things out. >> time warner cable is going directly to these manufacturers with these innovation. it already explained about the ipad application and confusion,

part of customers that were available only in your service area. how does this play forward as individual companies are developing new applications that are not widely available? >> i think you'll see lots of different applications on the television. not all of them will be available to all customers in all parts of the country. just as we do with the ipad, we can download an application to the samsung televisions that are in our equipment. it will be relatively clear to customers. >> how much are you keeping an eye on what other cable operators are developing in the area of new products as saying it would like to do that, too? i am thinking about the comcast announcement of its partnership with skype. are you looking around for ideas that you can incorporate into your own company? >> absolutely, all the time.

we'll take any ideas from anybody, including our competitors and other cable companies. i really like the application that comcast is going to be doing. >> social media, another area that has been burgeoning. talk about how you see social media applications being deployed in your service areas enhancing your business. >> it is another part of more intelligent navigation. you can either pick programming better yourself, based on all the additional information we are going to give you, or they can be these recommendation engines we talked about, or you can get recommendations from third parties. you should have access to " rotten tomatoes" so you can see what other people have thought about a movie or show. the fourth way would be to get

opinions from your friends. having facebook available on screen and letting teenagers or people in general talk about the programming they are watching while they are watching it, i think will be very popular. the integration of social networking makes a lot of sense for navigation. >> people are watching tv and using application and possibly doing social media while consuming your product. all of this creates additional demand on your broadband. people have been talking about multitasking is that is going on in a single home that might have consumed eight hours of television, and now you have multiple that number because of all the dit -- all the additional devices. broadband capacity has been a continual issue for this industry. i just came from a