Cable-TV trade group rebranding itself

In the late 1980s, when moguls like John Malone and Ralph Roberts fought over cable-TV franchises and when a new cable channel seemed to be born every few days, attendance at the national trade show topped 30,000 participants, all swapping gossip and making deals.

In addition to that event, thousands more attended five regional cable-industry trade shows.

All that changed over the next two decades with the industry consolidation that pared ownership down to a few companies - the biggest among them Roberts' Comcast Corp.

The growth of the Internet is the other huge factor.

Excitement and interest in the industry waned to the point that most of the regional cable shows have been canceled. Attendance at the national Cable Show, as it has been known, plunged to 10,100 this year.

Now the solution is to reinvigorate the lackluster show with a major rebranding.

Next year's National Cable & Telecommunications Association trade show will be called INTX: The Internet and Television Expo. It will be held May 5-7 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

The goal is to broaden the exhibitor base beyond entertainment networks, telecommunications-equipment suppliers, and cable companies themselves to brand-name Internet companies, said Barbara York, senior vice president for industry affairs at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

The trade group wants to make the show "more visceral" and to "broaden the conversation," York said.

Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and other Internet-based companies exist, the association believes, because of the cable industry's investment of tens of billions of dollars in its high-speed Internet backbone, and they should be part of the trade show, the group says.

In addition, Internet-related revenue is growing far faster at Comcast and other cable-TV companies than revenue from the legacy cable-TV business.

"Amazon should be there. This is what we are trying to accomplish with this name change," York said. "There is a home for you. Please be there."

Rebranding a trade show might be difficult, she said, because attendees grow comfortable over time with the event's format. But "the tipping point," she said, "was when we did the internal review after last year's show."

Those regional cable gatherings? Only one remains, in New England.