NCTA's Sachs Opts Not To Seek Contract Renewal
Commits to Serve as President & CEO Beyond 2004 as Necessary
To Facilitate Search for a Successor
NCTA Board Chair Britt to Appoint Search Committee
Washington , D.C. – Robert Sachs , President & CEO since 1999 of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), has informed the NCTA Board of Directors that he will not seek to renew his current contract with the Association.
In a June 18, 2004 , letter to the NCTA Board of Directors, Sachs said, “For almost five years I've had the great privilege of leading NCTA. As the industry has experienced unprecedented change and launched new [broadband services], I cannot imagine a more exciting period to represent our industry in Washington .”
Sachs, 55, said he had reached his decision at this point in time based in part on personal considerations – including a desire not to commute every week between his home in Boston and NCTA's offices in Washington, D.C. – as well as wanting to avoid having speculation about his plans create any distraction from NCTA's legislative and regulatory activities.
Sachs told the NCTA Board that he is willing to serve beyond 2004, as necessary, to facilitate the Board's search for a successor.
“On behalf of the entire NCTA Board, I want to thank Robert for the great job he's done during the past five years,” said Glenn Britt, Chairman and CEO of Time-Warner Cable and current Chairman of the NCTA Board of Directors. “We deeply appreciate the achievements of Robert and the NCTA staff during this period. Those achievements include reaching a landmark agreement with the consumer electronics industry for ‘plug and play' digital cable ready TVs, rallying industry support behind free parental control tools for TV viewing, and creating a deregulatory environment for cable broadband services, which has encouraged our industry to invest billions of dollars in valuable new consumer services. Not to be understated has been Robert's skill at keeping an industry with sometimes divergent business views working together in Washington . We're very sorry to lose him as NCTA President & CEO. We hope he'll remain active in our industry, and we wish him all the best in any new endeavors.”
Britt said the Executive Committee of the NCTA Board this summer will discuss plans to retain an executive search firm but said that the search process is likely to get fully under way only after the entire NCTA Board of Directors meets in late September. Britt said that he will also appoint a special search committee of the Board.
Sachs joined NCTA in August 1999 under a three-year agreement. In 2001, he and the NCTA Board extended the relationship through 2004, bringing his term of service to nearly five and a half years.
“Having started at Continental Cablevision 25 years ago, and worked in cable most of my professional career, I care a great deal about our business, the people who work in it, and the valuable programming and services we provide to millions of consumers. Consequently, I want to do everything in my power to ensure both a smooth transition of leadership at NCTA and the industry's continued success,” Sachs said in his letter to the Board.
“We have a busy policy agenda through the end of this year and, in addition, important planning to do for the next Congress. Let me assure you that I intend to remain fully engaged in these activities for the balance of this year and until a successor is in place. There's no reason for NCTA to lose a single beat during this period. Fortunately, NCTA's continued success is not dependent upon any single person. NCTA's real strength is that it's a team – made up of talented and knowledgeable individuals who are strongly committed to our industry,” Sachs said.
Sachs' tenure at NCTA has coincided with an increasingly competitive marketplace for multichannel video services, and the launch of new cable services, including high speed Internet access, video-on-demand, HDTV and Voice over Internet Protocol service. During this period, NCTA has maintained a favorable regulatory environment for cable video services and won regulatory and judicial decisions enabling cable modem and telephony services to grow. The cable industry also has won favorable FCC rulings establishing that cable operators are not required to carry duplicative analog and digital channels of local broadcast stations or multiple digital channels for every local broadcast station.
“Working with this outstanding NCTA team, everyone on the Board, and numerous other leaders in our business, truly has been a great privilege,” wrote Sachs to the NCTA Board. “The results we've achieved, including establishing a deregulatory environment for broadband services; reaching the landmark ‘plug-and-play' DTV agreement with the consumer electronics industry; and putting in place voluntary industry-wide efforts to enable families to control TV viewing in their homes, also give me great pride.”
In addition to serving as a member of the NCTA Board of Directors and Executive Committee, Sachs is a Director of CableLabs; Cable-in-the Classroom, an organization he helped found, and The Ad Council.
A cancer survivor, Sachs is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and Vice Chairman and Director of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, a cancer advocacy organization. He was recently elected to the Board of Directors of Global Crossing, Inc., and to the Board of Trustees of Boston's Wang Center for the Performing Arts.
A communications attorney by background, Sachs was a Principal of Continental Consulting Group, LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm, before joining NCTA in 1999.
NCTA is the principal trade association of the cable television industry in the United States . NCTA represents cable operators serving more than 90 percent of the nation's cable television households and more than 200 cable program networks, as well as equipment suppliers and providers of other services to the cable industry.
# # #