David Lepak, Vice President of Telechannel, provided a soup to nuts overview of the programming business and the challenges independent telcos face when adding cable television to their service offering. He talked of the trade-offs between being using an aggregator, a consultant or one’s own staff to acquire content. He suggested that the rights to IPTV are available these days and reported that Telechannel has 12 independent telcos turned up with four more in the pipeline.

Lepak is not a big advocate of ala carte. He suggests that ala carte will just mean that the cost per channel will significantly increase. He said that there is more value with a “bundle” of channels; a similar argument to the one that is made by people extolling the benefits of the “triple play”.

Educating the customers is critical in order for them to get the full value to of the package. He suggested that by building value packages, it is possible to compete on more than just price. Some of these value-added services include local content, as well as complementary web video content. Lepak pointed out that web video services, like ESPN 360, are available only to distributors of the cable programming. Similarly, Starz helps its cable programming distributors market its online movie download service, Vongo.

[Note: One audience member suggested that NCTC had lifted the new member moratorium. Vice President of Public Relations, Dan Mulvenon, however, confirmed that the moratorium is still in place.]