In Fairfax, Cox Is Reaching Beyond Cable TV

By Kenneth Bredemeier
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 31, 2000; Page F05 Gary McCollum arrived in the new year from Roanoke to take over Cox Communications' Fairfax cable TV operations and immediately found himself embroiled in the dispute with Fox Channel 5 that led to a six-day blackout of the channel for 260,000 customers in Northern Virginia.

But Cox and Fox did reach an agreement, while keeping the details secret, to put the channel of "The Simpsons," "Ally McBeal" and a Redskins playoff game back on the air. Now the boyish-looking, gap-toothed McCollum figures his fortunes as vice president and general manager of the Washington area's largest cable system can only get better.

In 30- and 60-second promotional ads, the 40-year-old McCollum, wearing a sport coat and open-necked shirt, apologized to viewers for the absence of Fox Channel 5 and said, "We shared your frustration."

He also said Cox was on the "cusp of a technological revolution," and promised large-scale changes in what the company offers its customers. In an interview he added, "The customers haven't seen Cox yet. We're not just the cable company."

Atlanta-based Cox Communications Inc. last year paid $1.4 billion to Media General Inc. for the Northern Virginia operation that includes 245,000 customers in Fairfax and another 15,000 in the Fredericksburg area. Cox took control Oct. 1.

But gone are the days when such franchises are just about cable TV.

A variety of competing companies with differing technologies are already vying and will continue to vie over the next few years to entice cable TV customers to pay more for a host of additional technological services, such as high-speed Internet access via cable lines and digital cable service to increase the available number of channels.

In the Washington area, Cox is somewhat behind Comcast Corp. in providing such extra services.

Comcast operates cable systems in Reston, Alexandria and Prince William and Prince George's counties and is looking to buy the Arlington and Montgomery county systems. Comcast already has high-speed Internet service and digital cable in Reston and Alexandria and a start on them in Prince George's and Prince William, according to Jaye Gamble, Comcast's regional vice president.

In short, Cox and other national communications companies find themselves in up-to-their-elbows competition to woo and keep customers.

Homeowners, restaurants and businesses don't need a cable company to get television; they can get a satellite dish.

They also don't need a cable company to get high-speed access to the Internet. They can get faster Internet connections from upgraded services provided by a telephone company.

And one of the jewels of that competition is in Fairfax, the nation's wealthiest community.

In hopes of winning new customers and getting old ones to buy more services, McCollum said Cox will spend $500 million on infrastructure by the end of 2003 on three broad improvements:

* Making Cox's high-speed Internet access called Road Runner available to all its customers, not just the several thousand who tap into it at the moment.

* Sharply upgrading its television offering with the advent of digital cable service that will provide 200 or more channels, up from the 120 it now offers.

* Getting into the telephone business to compete with Bell Atlantic Corp.

"We're going to invest a ton of money," McCollum said. "We're going to ratchet up the service. The cable network that was built by Media General was state of the art at the time" it opened in 1983.

Before it sold the Fairfax franchise, Media General had started installation of the Road Runner service over broadband cable lines that permit Internet users to avoid slower dial-up telephone connections that most Internet service providers use.

McCollum said, "We want to provide those services our customers deserve." He said Fairfax, with its personal wealth and vast array of technology companies of one sort or another, is "an excellent market" for those selling high-speed Internet links. He said he welcomes the business fight with telephone companies offering DSL (digital subscriber line) service.

He said that for technical reasons, digital cable, at an extra cost of $7 to $15 a month, will be installed first in the Fredericksburg area, which will allow viewers access to extra pay-per-view movie options, more sports and extra channels of HBO, Cinemax and other premium offerings. The first Fairfax customers will be hooked up by year's end, he said.

Aside from the technical advances, McCollum said he hopes to speed the service that Cox customers get in Northern Virginia. Now, customers who need a technician to visit their house to fix a cable problem often have to wait two or three days.

But McCollum said he hopes to boost the number of technicians so that four out of five houses will be serviced in the same day customers call to report a problem.

"We want to wow our customers," he said. "What we want to do is make every interaction an enjoyable one, that you walk away and are happy."

But that doesn't mean that cable bills, with or without the add-on services Cox is planning, will be cheaper. "Price is a major consideration," McCollum said. "If you're going to do business with us, you're going to get a quality service. I'm not going to say we're the cheapest. Clearly the cost of business continues to go up.

"I don't see rate reductions," he said. "But the value of what we're offering will continue to go up."

The Fox-Cox dispute stemmed from the 1992 federal law requiring cable operators to reach "retransmission consent" agreements with local TV stations every three years. In Northern Virginia, Fox's three-year pact with Cox expired Dec. 31.

In trying to negotiate a new deal, the network said Cox could continue to carry Fox-owned WTTG (Channel 5), but only if Cox also agreed to carry two Fox specialty channels: Fox Sports World, which features cricket and other international sports, and FXM, which carries 20th Century Fox movies. It was a dispute that spoke to a bigger issue: Who gets to decide what viewers can see? Is it the communications companies like Cox that provide the cable signals or the networks that supply the programs?

But McCollum said he viewed the dispute as not being about addition of the two channels so much as "standing up for our customers." He said he'd still "be happy to launch those two channels," but only if Fairfax viewers say they want them.

"It was not our decision to not carry Fox," he said, adding that as viewers came to understand the dispute, "the tenor of the calls" Cox received complaining about the blackout of Channel 5 began to move in Cox's favor.

In the meantime, he said, "we've decided that we won't disclose any pieces of the agreement. But we're happy [WTTG is] back on."

McCollum said he hopes there's no repeat of the dispute as other network contracts with Cox expire. But he added a note of caution: "It's not in our control."

© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company

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