Time Warner Cable, the country’s second-biggest cable company after Comcast, said 7/25 that Britt, its CEO since 2001, would retire at the end of the year. Britt, 64, will be succeeded by Robert Marcus, 48. Marcus has been in line for the top job since 2010, when he was named President/COO.
In an interview with the NY Times, Marcus said that his priorities would include residential subscriptions, the corporate culture and overall customer service. “We’ve got to develop a level of emotional connection with our customers,” he said, so that the company is not competing on price alone.
While gaining TV subscribers will be “challenging,” as Marcus put it, because of stiff competition (the company had 12.2 million subscribers at the end of last year, up from 9.2 million when Mr. Britt took over in 2001, but the number has been declining for several years), there is more potential on the broadband side.
Marcus was promoted to COO in 2010 from CFO. He played a big role in the Time Warner separation.
RBR-TVBR observation: Marcus will hopefully play a big role in working out some of the retransmission disputes that are currently on the plate. The move was announced as negotiations were extended between TWC and the CBS over a new carriage contract. The deadline is now 7/29. Meanwhile on 7/25, TWC lost carriage of six Journal Communications’ stations, (NBC/MNT in Green Bay; NBC in Milwaukee; CBS in Omaha; and NBC and MNT in Palm Springs) after having failed to reach a retransmission deal.
