Interview Date: March 18, 2025
Interviewer: Stewart Schley
Note: 2004 Cable Hall of Fame Honoree
2018 Bresnan Ethics in Business Honoree
Abstract
June Travis’s oral history details a trailblazing career in the cable television industry, beginning in the late 1960s when she joined American Television and Communications Corporation (ATC) as one of its earliest employees. Starting as a secretary, she rapidly expanded her role, contributing to franchise proposal writing and helping lead major initiatives like decentralization, which gave regional systems more autonomy and customer focus. Her practical leadership helped guide ATC’s growth into a national presence. Travis also played a pivotal role in co-founding Women in Cable (now WICT), advocating for professional development and visibility for women in the industry, with strong support from key figures like Bill Daniels and Bob Magness.
Travis later served as COO of Rifkin & Associates, overseeing cable system operations and emphasizing localism, team development, and customer service during a period of rapid industry expansion. Her experience led her to a public policy role at the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) during a critical regulatory period following the 1992 Cable Act, helping guide the industry toward the more favorable 1996 Telecommunications Act. Throughout her career, Travis championed ethical leadership, community engagement, and education, serving on boards such as C-SPAN and the Daniels Fund. Her story underscores the evolving nature of the cable industry and the impact of principled, people-centered leadership.
Interview Transcript
STEWART SCHLEY: A Colorado howdy on an almost spring morning in 2025. Thank you for joining us once again for this episode of the Hauser Oral History Series presented by Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center. If you’ve seen that t-shirt that says, “Been There, Done That,” it’s a pretty good calling card for my guest today, who is June Travis, an individual with decades of experience in the cable industry, tracing through some of the real seminal development points that we saw. And to have you, June, with us to sort of recount what you did do, what you saw, and how it all worked is greatly appreciated. So thanks for being here.
JUNE TRAVIS: Nice to be here.
SCHLEY: I just learned off camera that you worked for a while for an NBC affiliate station in the Cleveland market. Is that correct?
TRAVIS: Yes.
SCHLEY: And then somehow you segued both to Denver, Colorado, and to the cable industry. Talk a little bit about how that transition happened.
TRAVIS: Oh, well, when I was at NBC, we took a look at the potential impact of cable television on broadcast television. I mean, they were no threat to us in Cleveland because cable wasn’t allowed in the top 50 markets. But we took a look. So when I moved to Denver, there were a lot of cable companies out here, small, but a lot of them. And I said, gee, I know about that. It’s communications . So I pitched for a job at ATC. I think I was maybe the seventh or eighth employee. And they hired me, and I was too busy to ever leave.
SCHLEY: Who was and what was ATC?
TRAVIS: ATC was American Television and Communications Corporation. It was a small company when I joined it. It actually was Bill Daniels’ former cable systems. He ran, he owned a bunch of cable systems, but he also ran a brokerage business. And others in the brokerage business felt that was somewhat unfair. So he divested of his cable systems, and they became the nucleus for ATC. And Monty Rifkin, who had worked for Bill, moved across the street and ran it.
SCHLEY: And June, this was in early 70s, late?
TRAVIS: I think I joined in ‘69, so it was probably ‘68-ish or so when that happened.
SCHLEY: Bill Daniels, the legendary dealmaker and patriarch of this industry, spawned what became ATC.
TRAVIS: Correct. He was our largest shareholder.
SCHLEY: What did you do? What was your job?
TRAVIS: I was a secretary. But at that point, I was a secretary who did kind of everything that came down the pike. You know, we didn’t have a lot of people. So you wore many hats.
SCHLEY: A theme that would continue throughout your cable career was wearing many hats. It’s remarkable to think that there’s a lineage between ATC with less than a dozen employees, and today’s Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, hybrid, which is this huge company. So you saw this tremendous growth from a very early vantage point.
TRAVIS: Yes.
SCHLEY: So one of the activities you engaged in, I think, was franchising with ATC. One of the many hats you wore was the franchising hat.
TRAVIS: Yeah, that was later on. And I didn’t do franchising in the field. I wrote the proposals.
SCHLEY: What was franchising?
TRAVIS: Franchising really was a way to get access to a city’s, you know, lines so that we could build a cable system and provide service.
SCHLEY: You needed blessing and approval from the city fathers.
TRAVIS: Yes, the city fathers. And at that point, they were pretty much exclusive franchises because having two people spend that kind of capital in the same market just economically didn’t make sense.
SCHLEY: And it was what we once called a natural monopoly, I guess, is the way to look at it. But there were multiple competitors vying for that franchise.
TRAVIS: Yes. Franchising was very, very competitive.
SCHLEY: What was one of your wins? What market did you prevail in, for instance, just as an example?
TRAVIS: Well, I think one of the most hotly competitive ones was the Denver market. And that’s because so many of us were headquartered here. You know, there were a lot of cable companies headquartered here. So there was a lot of personal ego on the line, shall we say, with that one.
SCHLEY: And ATC ultimately won that?
TRAVIS: We did, indeed.
SCHLEY: Okay. I think you called it Mile High Cablevision after a certain amount of time.
TRAVIS: And, you know, Bill Daniels played a major role in getting that done for us.
SCHLEY: Why Denver? Did you ever contemplate, why did Denver become this sort of mecca for early cable industry development?
TRAVIS: You know, I have no idea. I think everybody really felt, number one, we’re in the middle of the country. And you had cable systems all over the country. So we had good transportation. And frankly, Denver attracted really a lot of young, well-educated people. So there was access to a growing workplace.
SCHLEY: Intellectual talent and people. One of the sort of early, but I think influential, pieces of work you did at ATC had to do with the concept of decentralization. Am I saying that correctly?
TRAVIS: Right.
SCHLEY: What was decentralization?
TRAVIS: Okay. And that was actually kind of late.
SCHLEY: Later in your ATC career?
TRAVIS: Yes. I mean, we were in the top 50 markets. We were a pretty good-sized company. But yes, I think we decided, well, and it wasn’t my decision, certainly, but the company decided that perhaps we’d do a better job of serving our customers if we decentralized the decision-making process. Everything had been done by corporate. All of the accounting, all of the engineering, you name it, all of the overall marketing plans. So we embarked on a process to decentralize the company and make our operating systems more autonomous. I mean, they still sent things in to be consolidated into Denver, but it really did, it worked. And we had a number of divisions, is what we called them, and a president of division and their own accounting department. And we also had a national division, which was the combination of a number of our smaller systems. So it worked very, very well, but it was a couple-year process to get that done.
SCHLEY: And that’s what I kind of wanted to talk about. How did you effect decentralization? Because you’re changing not just the decision-making, but kind of the culture of the company a little bit as well.
TRAVIS: Very much so.
SCHLEY: What was your role in making that happen? You used to be a secretary, now you’re running big operations here.
TRAVIS: Well, we decided — Joe Collins was president at the time, and we talked, and Jimmy Doolittle, and these were great operating guys. And they felt that people who were going to be named division presidents really needed some background in finance, accounting, and negotiation in order to run a company, basically. And I mean, they were great. They could run a cable system. They were cable guys. And so we, I talked to Ron Rizzuto at the University of Denver, whom I had met when I got my MBA there, and he put together with two other professors courses, three courses, on economics, excuse me, on finance, and so forth. And we ran our division presidents through those programs. We’d bring them to Denver, and they’d be immersed in those subjects, and then go back and run the business.
SCHLEY: One of the subjects was how to negotiate, I think. What kinds of things did people study or learn or pick up on?
TRAVIS: You know, I think they needed to learn skills to be effective with. We were regulated by our city fathers. You had to do community groups. There were negotiations for just regular business products. And it was just a skill set that made them more comfortable being the spokesman for their division in their local communities.
SCHLEY: It sounds a little bit, almost like an MBA-style program.
TRAVIS: An abbreviated one, probably.
SCHLEY: An abbreviated MBA program. What did you call the training?
TRAVIS: We dubbed it “Hamburger U.” just because we didn’t know what else to call it. But it was really very, very effective, and the people who came in really enjoyed the studies. And our divisions were very, very successful.
SCHLEY: Hamburger U., derived from the famous McDonald’s internal training program. If you go to the Wikipedia site today and look at Hamburger U., it says right at the top, not to be confused with the University of Hamburg. Just to make that clear. Did it work? Did the decentralization model work?
TRAVIS: You know, it did. They didn’t keep it forever. I had left the company by the time they pretty much dismantled it. Partly because it was a lot more expensive. We had duplicate accounting departments in each division and things like that. So there were some cost efficiencies that made sense after we… I think a portion of it always remained, however. I think still, the decision-making power for the local systems remained pretty strong.
SCHLEY: To me, what you did speaks to this important, sometimes neglected factor, or fact of life for cable, which is localism. It really is a local business, or was a local business.
TRAVIS: Very much so.
SCHLEY: And why did that matter, in terms of competitive posture, in terms of government relations? Why did we care?
TRAVIS: I think it matters because they’re the people closest to the consumer. And consumers, they vary from community to community. And things that are important in one community, another community doesn’t care about. Only somebody on site can really sort of understand and embrace that and build an effective team to address those issues and be part of the community.
SCHLEY: And from what you saw, was that model exclusive to ATC, or were you seeing it sort of verbal throughout a lot of the industry at the time?
TRAVIS: No, at the time it was pretty exclusive to ATC.
SCHLEY: Some of your big markets would have been, I want to say, Rochester, New York. Was that one of yours?
TRAVIS: Sure, Rochester, Orlando, Florida.
SCHLEY: Right. Around this time, you’ll have to level set me on the timing, but you became involved with, and I believe co-founded, an organization that originally was called Women in Cable, WIC. Can you just talk about the heritage there, and how that came about, and why did it matter?
TRAVIS: Well, Women in Cable came about because there were a lot of women in the business, but we were mostly in clerical positions, weren’t able to travel. There was no networking. There was no vehicle. And so a few of us had gotten together and said, I wonder if we could put this together and really create an organization that educated and broadened. And how we tried to sell it to the powers that be in our companies was, your employees will be better. We will be better educated, and we will be able to contribute more fully than we have in the past. And frankly, we had pretty good support from the companies.
SCHLEY: It wasn’t that hard of a sell to the senior executives?
TRAVIS: No, it really wasn’t. Out here, and I founded the Denver Chapter. Out here, Bill Daniels, of course, Betsy and Bob Magness were right there. They not only helped support us a little bit financially, but they would come to the meetings and talk and be with us and talk about the business and how they viewed the business and how they viewed their jobs. It was incredibly supportive.
SCHLEY: So the mechanisms for WIC early on were mostly in-person networking, conferencing, those sorts of physical human gatherings?
TRAVIS: Yes, we had programs and we’d have people come in and talk about their segment of the business. So you’d have a programmer, you’d have a technology person, we had some CEOs, and you really did learn how all of the pieces sort of fit together.
SCHLEY: It was a male-dominated business, perhaps to some extent remains so, but it wasn’t the only male-dominated industry in this country. It was, you lived through it, you know, but are there any takeaways, tutorials, lessons you can convey to a young woman who’s sort of trying to rise through the ranks today in this industry? How do you, how do you, how do you get your voice heard?
TRAVIS: Well, I think through performance. I mean, nothing replaces performance. And in all honesty, I think it might have been easier for me, as odd as that might seem, than it is now, because the companies were growing so rapidly. They didn’t — if you were a warm breathing body who was halfway capable, you had the shot of doing it.
SCHLEY: Let’s not sell yourself short, though.
TRAVIS: No, but it’s true. There were openings then. Now the growth is there, but it’s slower. So there are fewer opportunities than there were back then.
SCHLEY: But you are a bit of a case in point, because I think if I have the chronology right, after the ATC adventure, you actually ran as COO, a good-sized cable company, which was called?
TRAVIS: Rifkin & Associates.
SCHLEY: What was that company all about?
TRAVIS: Well, Monty Rifkin, who of course had headed up ATC for years and years as well, started a company, and he didn’t structure this one the same. This one was partnership-based, and he would acquire cable systems, usually mid-sized to smaller systems.
SCHLEY: 10,000, 20,000 subscribers?
TRAVIS: Well, probably the biggest was maybe up to 20, and then down. And yes, I was the COO. You know, I love the operating side of the business.
SCHLEY: Why? What was fun about that part of the biz?
TRAVIS: Well, I like the people for openers, and I like the community, and I like customers. I just, I really did like that sort of part of the business. I had started as staff, I mean, which was typical, and I just didn’t find staff nearly as intriguing as operating a business.
SCHLEY: Because you were removed, one step removed from where the rubber meets the road?
TRAVIS: You could be channeled. You were sort of boxed. When you’re in operations, you’ve got your fingers in kind of every aspect of the business, and that’s fun.
SCHLEY: And difficult. You were running networks that were on 24-7 that provided this vital service to people, mostly television at the time, packages of television channels. They didn’t like it when their television channels were not available on the screen. Talk a little bit, if you would, June, about the customer care challenges of this business in that 1980s sort of era.
TRAVIS: Well, we had a spotty record when it came to customer service, which was a problem for the industry, which is why we got regulated so harshly at one point. It’s hard. I mean, customer service, you’re right, is very, very hard in a business where, you know, a car hits a telephone pole, and it goes down, and so does your cable system. And, and it takes a little while to get it back up, and you’re right, people get very upset if they don’t, particularly if it happens during the middle of something that they’re watching.
SCHLEY: God forbid it’s a Super Bowl or, or, you know, a boxing pay-per-view event.
TRAVIS: But we also didn’t do as good a job of customer service. You know, when Dan Ritchie was in the cable business, he was instrumental in something called Cable Cares, and really put a focus on customer service. And I think that the industry has done better.
SCHLEY: I think absolutely. But without making excuses, why was it so hard? What were some of the operational challenges in it, on Tuesday morning, running a cable system?
TRAVIS: Well, it was hard because, like I said, we were growing very quickly. I mean, a lot of our staff wasn’t very well trained. I mean, you had warm bodies, but not everybody had as much training and support as they needed.
SCHLEY: And you’re growing.
TRAVIS: And we also ran pretty thin.
SCHLEY: Okay. You’re growing by adding customers all the time, right?
TRAVIS: Correct.
SCHLEY: This was still the heyday of growing.
TRAVIS: And it was a very capital-intense business, and very frankly, the capital side of the business got more attention than marketing, customer service, HR, whatever. I mean, you had to build the systems. So capital went that direction, and there were less resources, shall we say, and less interest in developing the other side of the business.
SCHLEY: The sort of unsung hero of this business, perhaps even still, was what we called the cable system manager, right? And this was the individual at the local level who, as you said, ran the show. What made a really good cable system manager?
TRAVIS: Well, kind of what makes any manager good. I think the skills, caring for the people, helping develop those people, you know, being part of a team. And frankly, somebody who is sensitive to the local community and its needs, and puts a value on that, and makes sure the rest, everybody in their organization does.
SCHLEY: You spoke a minute ago, June, of some harsh treatment at the federal regulatory level. I think you’re talking about the 1992 Cable Act, which put the hammer down on this industry.
TRAVIS: Yeah, it was a tough one, yeah.
SCHLEY: What happened?
TRAVIS: Well, partly because of customer service. You know, we were growing very rapidly, and we had– There were industries that didn’t like us very much, you know, the telephone companies were one, the broadcasters. And very frankly, they were much more effective in some ways in Washington than we were.
SCHLEY: More sophisticated lobbying and policy operations, right?
TRAVIS: And so that act went through, and it severely limited growth, because it limited access to capital, and so we were kind of in a tread water pattern there for a bit.
SCHLEY: One of the really onerous provisions was it allowed, or mandated, the FCC to oversee, in some cases, a rate rollback program. Suddenly, the numbers don’t work the way they were supposed to work. Is that a fair way to express it?
Yeah. I don’t think it was, I mean– Companies didn’t go under, but it really did stop the continued investment. Whether it was in building new plant, or investment to make our systems and our people even more effective.
SCHLEY: Around that time, what was the relationship like between your programming partners and the cable operating companies? And was it shifting or changing at all, or was it fairly constant, the way that arrangement worked?
TRAVIS: I think by and large, it, it was a pretty good relationship. I mean, contract negotiations used to be, you know, a little tough once in a while. And I think we always felt, the cable side, always felt like we got blamed for rate increases, but our programming costs were going up. And some of them, it’s not their fault. I mean, there is a limited amount of programming and an increasing number of programmers vying for that programming. So the economics say, yep, the price goes up.
SCHLEY: It seemed like there was a time when, I think you just articulated it, the market presence and power sort of shifted over to the programmers more, maybe more so than the cable operating, cable operating companies.
TRAVIS: Well, yeah, we needed the programming, there’s no question.
SCHLEY: When, I want to take you in a moment to the, your work with NCTA, but around the time of early nineties, if I can jog your memory, the industry was starting to do some things that didn’t have always something to do with television, right? Like we were beginning to dabble in interactive services and high-speed internet and telephony, even. Was that an arduous, scary time or was it sort of an innovative, inventive time?
TRAVIS: Well, it certainly wasn’t a major portion of the business. I mean, they kept, you kept your eye on stuff. Cable was blessed by having a coaxial cable that had much greater capacity for doing stuff than we originally thought, or at least than I originally thought. And it was able to be kind of used in ways we’d never thought of before. And it was starting to get some attention. Cable Labs was there and they’ve frankly did an awful lot of work on behalf of the industry to try to leverage the new beneficial uses of coaxial cable.
SCHLEY: That’s what is fascinating to me is it’s almost as if not everybody understood what you had put into the ground at this point. This was a remarkable infrastructure.
Travi: I think most of us didn’t understand.. (laughing)
SCHLEY: Fair enough. Take me, if you would, June, to your next adventure. It was with the primary public policy, lobbying, and advocacy organization, NCTA, for the cable industry. What brought you to Washington, D.C. and what did you hope to accomplish and did you accomplish it?
TRAVIS: Well, I went, I’d been on the NCTA board when I was the head of Rifkin. And when we got into, well, when we had that horrible regulatory situation come up it really stunted– Well, no, it didn’t stunt, it kind of killed our opportunity to grow because we were partnership-based and you just couldn’t acquire anything. So I decided maybe I could do more good back there. And Decker Anstrom asked if I’d come back and help. And I decided to do that. It was sort of a spur of the moment thing, to be perfectly honest.
SCHLEY: It’s a big leap, though. It was a big leap.
TRAVIS: Oh, it was a huge leap for me. Yeah, because I’m not a public policy person. But because the industry was so badly injured by the regulation, there was some friction that had developed in the industry, and you know, a little bit of finger pointing. And I think Decker felt that maybe I could help.
SCHLEY: You were an authentic, trusted figure, I think, putting words in your mouth, but I think that’s probably a fair way to encapsulate your role there. Decker formerly, I think, ran the Weather Channel and he was at this time president of NCTA. This led into yet another major legislative rewrite, which was the 1996 Communications Act, which I think was the first time Congress decided to look at the entire panoply of telephony, television, over-the-air television, cable, and try to figure out a regulatory policy that makes sense. Did that make your head explode? I mean, there was a lot there.
TRAVIS: Oh, there was a huge amount there. And there were a few failed attempts before the ‘96 Act got through. Yes, it’s mind boggling. That whole process is something to behold if you are not of Washington. But Decker, who has incredible integrity and consequently great respect in Washington, D.C., you know, really worked with the board and helped get a bill through that allowed the industry to go back and grow.
SCHLEY: The voice was there. At least the cable industry had a voice in that bill.
TRAVIS: Absolutely.
SCHLEY: What was your job? Did you meet with Senators and Congress people?
TRAVIS: No, I never did. Maybe once I did. By and large, that was not my role. NCTA employed absolutely brilliant lawyers who worked with the FCC and government relations folks who worked on the Hill. And they knew that part, but they didn’t know the cable industry. And so I was sort of a resource to them, and frankly, I was COO, so I took a lot of the administrative burden off Decker. And because he had a full, I mean, that’s a full-time job trying to get that Act crafted and then through.
SCHLEY: When you think back on it now, was it the right move? Was it enjoyable? Was it satisfying as a career destination?
TRAVIS: You know, I ended up loving it. It was just so foreign to me. I mean, that had nothing to do with the Cable Act, but there was an election season, just a regular old election.
SCHLEY: There are no regular old elections! (laughing)
TRAVIS: They had parties to watch election returns and cheer. And I’m going, really? I mean, I’ve never heard of such a thing. So no, it was a very different, very different experience and one I thoroughly enjoyed.
SCHLEY: The reason I sort of used the t-shirt motif to start out this conversation, “been there, done that,” is you have touched so many areas of the business, but the thread that I hear recurring as we talk is a people thread, a human thread. And that has included for you being pretty proactive, not just with the WICT organization, but with volunteering and serving on boards of nonprofit organizations like United Way. And I have to get you to talk about one that’s based here in Denver called the Young Americans Bank. What is it? And what is its connection to the cable business?
TRAVIS: Well, Bill [Daniels] founded it. Yes, which is its connection, of course. And it’s a great little bank. And he felt that young people should understand and know how to access the financial system. And it’s wonderful. I mean, I loved being on that board.
SCHLEY: It’s about 20 minutes from us here. In the Cherry Creek neighborhood.
TRAVIS: It is indeed. And you know, people come in. And at one point, I don’t know now because I’m very dated, but at one point we had customers in almost every state in the union. And they’d come in with their little deposits and stand on these little stools and everything is, yeah, kid sized. But they learn how to write out a deposit slip and this and that. And of course, you know, banking has changed and so has Young Americans over the time, but Bill loved that bank and it was great fun to be on that board.
SCHLEY: One of the many Bill Daniels aphorisms was he always called capitalism the eighth wonder of the world.
TRAVIS: Yes he did.
SCHLEY: He really believed in the power of, like you said, accessing the financial system and understanding what resources can do. Other organizations you’ve helped along or served on the board of include, I think, C-SPAN and Cable in the Classroom. Could you talk a little bit about those two organizations and what you’ve done to sort of keep the motor running there?
TRAVIS: Well, you know, C-SPAN is probably the crown jewel of the cable television industry, in all honesty. I mean, Brian Lamb and Rob [Kennedy] and Susan [Swain], they created something that this industry could really be proud of. And it’s been around a long time. The cable industry pretty much supported it, I think, all the operating side. It took a little while for some, but it really was, I think, one of the shining moments for the cable television industry.
SCHLEY: Yeah, I love that you call it the crown jewel of cable.
TRAVIS: It truly is.
SCHLEY: And Cable in the Classroom was also, sort of had a public service motivation?
TRAVIS: Absolutely. Again, I think it was part of the industry’s effort to show that they actually really did care about customers. They did care about the community. You know, we had gotten a bad rap in some ways, and some of it was earned. And I think that to the industry’s credit, they spent a lot of effort and time to support organizations to help change that image.
SCHLEY: And let’s use C-SPAN again as the example. How was that funded? What was the mechanism by which C-SPAN had enough money to operate a television network?
TRAVIS: Well, cable operators paid for carriage.
SCHLEY: And they paid a per subscriber monthly fee—
TRAVIS: Sure.
SCHLEY: — which added up to tens of millions of dollars, I’m sure, or more per year. So it was out of the pocket of the cable industry that this organization grew to thrive. This is a hard question, but you, because you’ve named from Jimmy Doolittle to Joe Collins to just now Brian Lamb, but who might you cite as among the handful of people who really kind of propelled your career and had an influence on June Travis?
TRAVIS: You know, the three who are probably the most important were Bill Daniels, Dan Ritchie, and Decker Anstrom. They were probably the three.
SCHLEY: We’ve talked a little bit about Bill and a little bit about Decker. What, what was Dan Ritchie’s role and place in this business? He sort of was an everyman, I think, worked in the broadcasting side for a while. His name adorns a building at the nearby University of Denver campus. But what about him made him kind of special?
TRAVIS: You know, I think the thing that all three of those guys have in common is ethics. It was ethics and integrity. It was unbelievably high, and the way they worked with people and treated people. And frankly, I think that’s why I put all three of them in that category. I believe that I watched them and I felt if I ever get to be in management or move up the ladder, I’d like to be able to emulate what they did.
SCHLEY: Love it. And for Bill, he really, I think, he did, what is it, walk the talk. Like you, when you saw him in action, you took away takeaways from the way he treated people.
TRAVIS: Absolutely.
SCHLEY: It was tough because in the brokerage business, it’s dealmaking and it’s managing a myriad of complex relationships. And to do it on the up and up with a high standard of ethics was not an easy thing to do, I think.
TRAVIS: No. And he did it on a handshake. Not with a bank of lawyers.
SCHLEY: What has been– beyond a paycheck and beyond the career progression, what’s been fun about working in this, in this business?
TRAVIS: Oh, learning. Because everything was new. When I joined the industry, there were no departments, you know. Marketing? and [raising hand] ah! And so there was always a learning curve. And I think that’s fun. I mean, it’s challenging, but it’s fun. It’s not– every day can be sort of a new adventure in some respects.
SCHLEY: It’s interesting that that’s still, you know, here at Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center, there’s a huge program devoted to it within-company intrapreneurship. And so at some level, that still remains, I mean, that sense of adventure and possibility. And would you agree with that in today’s cable business?
TRAVIS: Well, I don’t know. I mean, I truly haven’t thought about it or been involved for a long period of time now. But I would hope so, because that really energizes people. It’s not just doing rote. It’s exciting to be building something new or being part of building something new.
SCHLEY: Do you ever look at where this industry is today and maybe where it’s going and just sort of marvel? It was so interesting to hear you talk about, we didn’t even know what we had, you know, in terms of infrastructure, but a pretty incredible transformation has occurred in our lifetimes.
TRAVIS: Oh, indeed. Yes, from providing three channels of service to a couple hundred is quite an evolution. And frankly, telephony and broadband. I was going to say programming is probably the smaller part of the business revenue stream anymore. So who knows where it’s going to go, but I do think it will evolve. It’ll be in the mix somewhere and it’ll be in the middle.
SCHLEY: If someone had told you when you took over as COO of Rifkin that someday cable television, the television part would, would sublimate to something else, what would you say? Come on, you gotta be joking me. You know?
TRAVIS: Yeah. I didn’t have that kind of foresight. (laughing) I was not one of the entrepreneurs. And because they really did have vision. And I remember Bill Daniels years and years, and I mean years ago, pointed at his watch and he said, someday, you know, a computer is going to be right on your wrist. And I’m going, oh God, that can’t be right. And of course he was right.
SCHLEY: Forward thinking. And I want to also maybe get toward the end of our conversation with a bookend question, taking you from way back to maybe the future. But when you were a kiddo, you grew up in the Cleveland area. What was television like?
TRAVIS: I’m old enough that we didn’t even have television when I was growing up.
SCHLEY: Okay, fair enough. No big stereo set in the living room?
TRAVIS: Finally my one set of grandparents got a television set and every once in a while we would go over to see this gigantic piece of furniture with about an 8-inch screen.
SCHLEY: Tubes, tubes.
TRAVIS: And then, you know, it was three channels. It was NBC, ABC and CBS.
SCHLEY: Yes. And shockingly, I think you had to physically go up to the television set and change the channel. I did.
TRAVIS: Yes. And there was no such thing as a remote.
SCHLEY: So now let’s fast forward. What would you advise or suggest to a young person about working in this industry today? Why choose cable telecommunications over banking, working in the airline industry, working in restaurants or fast food? What’s the appeal?
TRAVIS: I think the appeal of cable, of communications in general, is that done well, it really can move society along. It can really make a difference. It takes some effort, but it has the ability to enhance life, and in lots of ways. And I just think communications is an area that when put to good use, it makes a difference.
SCHLEY: It was interesting when you talked about the tendency of this industry to engulf capital, which, I mean, if you look at, you were talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of investment over a 20-year period in this industry, but the services that that capital investment has enabled, who knew that there would be a Netflix one day? Who knew that there would be Zoom telecommunications one day? All the things we sort of almost take for granted, to be honest, are, you know, in the U.S. at least, dominated by the cable industry. It’s rather remarkable, I think.
TRAVIS: It is. I mean, if somebody told me that there would be hundreds of channels, I would have said, why? That can’t be. But there are some niche channels that have absolutely loyal, loyal viewers.
SCHLEY: Well, you remember all too well how difficult it was in the day if you did reach an impasse with the programming provider to take that channel off. Did you ever have to do that?
TRAVIS: Oh, no. No. Yeah, that is a tough one.
SCHLEY: Because the rancor that would develop–
TRAVIS: Oh, absolutely. And because it is somebody’s favorite channel. And it, you know, the economics of the business say that you package large packages and deliver. And the downside of that is if you do come to an impasse and have to drop a channel. Or if you are channel constrained and you’re not able to add a channel that people want.
SCHLEY: Meaning you had room for 35, but you couldn’t carry HGTV, whatever.
TRAVIS: Correct. Until something got rebuilt.
SCHLEY: Right. And. I’m not sure that’s well understood. And you make a good point about the bundling argument. For years, this industry defended packaging. If we support lots of channels in expansive bundles, we’ll end up with greater diversity and choice. Then I think that was the core economic argument behind it.
TRAVIS: Right.
SCHLEY: And today that model is sort of blowing up as you go into discrete access to episode level television. And I think in some ways the arguments that the cable industry made back in the late 80s, early 90s are now proving out. That maybe the bundle was a pretty good way to get content in front of people.
TRAVIS: Well, it’s an efficient way. And it is probably cost effective. And I’m still a cable subscriber as opposed to a streaming person.
SCHLEY: Well, you have to be. You can’t not say that on this stage, at least. But that explosion has been has been fascinating to watch. What, June, haven’t we talked about that you think is germane or material or maybe is a big theme of your professional life in this industry?
TRAVIS: Oh, I think we’ve covered everything.
SCHLEY: It’s because I’m so good—
TRAVIS: You’re perfect. (laughter)
SCHLEY: — extracting from you all the perfect detail. But I’ve loved talking about your, really your love for people and how that’s carried through in a lot of different guises. And I think to me that is a thematic message of what you’ve been about in this business.
TRAVIS: Well, thank you.
SCHLEY: Buy the T-shirt. Been there. Done that. June Travis has. We so greatly appreciate you spending some time with us in the spring of 2025. And for you [gesturing to the viewer], thank you for tuning in. This is Stewart Schley for Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center.
