Ramsay on Comcast: "We're still talking"

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Ramsay on Comcast: "We're still talking"

Insidetivoramsay Last month we posted about a New York Times story that said TiVo walked away from Comcast. USA Today published an interview with Michael Ramsay, ex-CEO and current-Chairman of TiVo, that asked about the Comcast deal reported in the Times.

Q: There've been reports that TiVo was close to striking a licensing deal with Comcast, but you scrapped it.

A: That is totally untrue. I sure as hell am not going to walk away from something that makes sense for the company and its shareholders. That rumor, wherever it came from — and God knows where it came from — is totally fabricated and completely false.

Q: How close did you and Comcast get?

A: Well, we're still talking. We're in discussions with cable companies. We have a variety of offerings for them. These kinds of deals can take months, years to develop because they have great strategic importance for both companies. We're committed to developing those relationships no matter how long they take. If we thought the outcome was futile, we wouldn't be doing it. There's been no pulling back. In fact, it's accelerating.

TiVo's stock has dropped from a 52 week high of $12.94 to $3.63 this morning, due to the loss of DirecTV as a future partner, slow introduction of HDTV and TiVoToGo and most recently the resignation of their President.

Thomas Hawk, who tipped me off to the story, is frustrated with a couple oddities about the timing and the New York Times sourcing.

Well for starters Mike, it is a leading misleading to say "and God knows where it came from" when I damn well hope that you are reading something in a publication as influential as the New York Times about the future of your company. Ok maybe you meant you didn't know where it came from prior to the Times printing it.

If in fact this is not how the deal went down I think this points to a significant credibility problem for the New York Times. The Times published, "Yet, at the last minute, Michael Ramsay, TiVo's chief executive, decided to pull out of the deal. Comcast was not going to pay TiVo enough money or give it enough control over its service, Mr. Ramsay told the company's board, according to people involved in those discussions."

...

However, on a second point, you wait until February 3rd to come out and call the news completely false? I mean yeah the closing price the day before the news of $4.44 a share is not much better than the $3.51 closing price of today but on a percentage basis it's kind of significant.

One of the things that frustrates TiVo fans and investors alike is its inability to effectively communicate. Is this another case of bad PR or is there something else going on?

A deal with Comcast would be huge for TiVo, but TiVo's plan to use the Internet to make an end-run around cable and satellite providers might be a deal breaker for Comcast.

by George Hotelling February 4, 2005 in TiVo

Comments

I'm wondering if cable modems (higher throughput than DSL) is TiVo's preferred IP delivery method. That could be what the talks with Comcast are about. It could also be what DirecTV got run off over (since there is also data broadcast from sattelite to be looked at.)

Posted by: Phelps at Feb 4, 2005 10:18:47 AM

Perhaps Im not fully understanding Daniel Ernst's (Wall Street analyst) point of view, but he appears to be totally contradictory:

From the USA Today article:
"The campaign they launched didn't have the impact they'd hoped for," says Hudson Square Research's Daniel Ernst. "They had a good year, but not a blowout year -- a tipping point like iPod had. They need to fix that."

From a report he published today:
"SALES STRENGTH CONTINUES: Over the last few weeks, we conducted 32 interviews with staff at consumer electronics stores across the country to gauge post holiday TiVo sales strength. The results of this survey, coupled with the results of surveys conducted during November 2004 and December 2004 (98 total interviews), confirm our view that TiVo's FY4Q05 results could come in above guidance. Contrary to popular sentiment, we believe TiVo is executing on target, and believe that despite growing competition, TiVo's total market share is actually expanding."

Daniel's clarification would be really helpful...

Posted by: New York at Feb 4, 2005 1:21:31 PM

I don't understand why people think Tivo is so great. My DirecTivo sometimes takes 3 minutes to respond after I command it to record an upcoming show or season's pass. My Scientific Atlanta 8000HD is ready for the next command in virtually no time at all. Same goes for reprioritizing - the Tivo takes forever to do this simple task. I'm more than happy to give up the thumbs-up, thumbs-down capability, and a few other Tivo niceties, for that kind of trouble-free non-frustrating performance. Tivo has been a walking corpse for a year now. They should have had a higher-performance, fully-featured cablecard HD unit the minute cablecards were available yet they steadfastly tied their hopeless wagon to DirectTV while taking forever to bring long-announced addtional functionality to the minority of their customers. Dumbasses.

Posted by: Longtime owner at Feb 8, 2005 7:36:49 PM

I just got my Comcast DVR and it pretty much sucks a**. Doesn't automatically record shows and most importantly it screws up every sporting event but shutting down recording at the end of the listed time. So if a very good, or only somewhat good, or even if I start a game on a 10-minute delay it always screws up the end of the game.

I hate it.

Posted by: jjj at Feb 10, 2005 8:54:51 AM

Ramsay on Comcast: "We're still talking"

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