CABLE EXECUTIVES EXPECTING BIG YEAR

LAS VEGAS —  The nation’s cable-television executives, here for their annual convention, are heralding this as a watershed year for their industry because it will soon reach 50% of the national audience.

“This year marks a new beginning for our industry,” James P. Mooney, president of the National Cable Television Assn., declared in his welcoming address Monday.

“We’ve not only arrived as a full-blown television medium in our own right,” Mooney said, “we’re every day gaining critical mass as an indispensable contributor to the diverse viewing opportunities (that) the American public is coming to expect as part of everyday life.”

He and other executives suggested that this could be a pivotal year for cable because the industry is just beginning to enjoy the benefits of its 5-month-old rate deregulation, it is building audience and thus its revenue base and it is planning to spend $2 billion on programming.

For the first time, Mooney added, cable programming services are beginning to attract more viewership in full-service cable homes than NBC, ABC and CBS put together.

“We are changing the television landscape,” said James S. Cownie of Heritage Communications in Des Moines, Iowa, who also is vice-chairman of the National Cable Television Assn. He said that the programming developed by the cable industry has been a “terrific, positive societal force.”

The annual association convention, which opened Sunday and continues through Wednesday, is being attended by about 12,000 people, slightly fewer than last year.

At the sessions Monday, the emphasis was on cable’s future, the impact of deregulation, the increased penetration of markets where cable systems already exist, consumer service and programming.

Mooney said that attracting and keeping subscribers to existing cable operations, rather than building new systems, is now the principal challenge that the industry faces and will continue to face over the next decade.

Mooney also took another shot in his ongoing verbal warfare with the Hollywood production industry, saying that one of the things that cable is doing in the programming area is cracking “a cartel that has dominated the television world for nearly 40 years.”

“Our programming services, with their specialized appeal to discreet audiences, are pulling away viewers--therefore ratings--from conventional television,” he said. “We’ve proven that there can be more to television than ‘Dallas,’ ‘Dynasty’ and the new, revised ‘Lucy Show.’ Is it any wonder that the alleged creative types in Hollywood are upset?”

Producer Norman Lear (“All in the Family,” “Maude”), appearing on a panel after Mooney’s speech Monday, said that cable has given hope to writers, producers and others in Hollywood that there are places other than ABC, CBS and NBC to sell their talents. At the same time, however, most of them would still rather take their ideas to one of the major networks first, he added.

Lear also questioned the extent to which the cable industry has been willing to take risks to introduce innovative formats.

“I don’t think you should be so self-satisfied,” Lear told the audience of about 2,500 cable-industry officials.

But cable was defended at the same session by association Chairman Trygve E. Myhren, who also is chairman of American TV and Communications Corp. in Inglewood, Calif. He equated cable television to a video newsstand whose major impact has been in special-interest programming, or narrowcasting, for specific audiences. Myhren said that cable has brought to the American viewers a new form of television and pointed to programming including CNN, C-SPAN and MTV.

Michael Fuchs, chairman of Home Box Office, said that cable is “finally coming out of its inferiority complex. It’s finally feeling its oats.”

But Fuchs also said that network schedules and other demands have “poisoned” the programmers’ minds when it comes to developing projects for the cable industry. “We almost have to grow our own talent,” he said, adding that he believed cable has been doing a great deal in the programming area. “It’s just not in the assembly line of what Hollywood is used to.”

Brian Lamb, chairman of C-SPAN of Washington, D.C., agreed that programming is not cable’s biggest problem; the key issues for cable operators, he said, are improving their service and marketing.

“The product is there,” Lamb said. “It’s selling what we have to the consumer in a way that he or she understands it.”