Posts Tagged ‘Brian Roberts’

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is a cover boy — specifically, the cover of Fortune, as he was named the magazine’s 2010 Business Person of the Year.

Other tech and media movers and shakers to crack the list of 50 included Apple CEO Steve Jobs (No. 3), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (No. 4), Baidu CEO Robin Li (No. 6), Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (No. 7), Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos (No. 10), Google CEO Eric Schmidt (No. 11), Zynga CEO Mark Pincus (No. 12), IBM CEO Sam Palmisano (No. 15), salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff (No. 18), Andreessen Horowitz general partner Marc Andreessen (No. 19), Disney CEO Bob Iger (No. 22), Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (No. 24), Pandora founder Tim Westergren (No. 26), Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes (No. 27), DirecTV CEO Michael White (No. 32), Samsung Electronics CEO Geesung Choi (No. 39), Comcast CEO Brian Roberts (No. 43), and Mail.ru Group CEO Yuri Milner (No. 46).

Fortune reporter Peter Newcomb wrote on Hastings:

What does it take to be at the top of business in 2010? We searched for leaders who didn’t just crawl from the wreckage of the Great Recession, but sprinted from it. This year, Hastings has thrown his company’s muscle behind delivering television and movies over the Internet, risking his $2 billion-in-sales DVD-by-mail business. The result: a company that has grown from a gnat to a giant. Now when deals are made in media, the increasingly important question is, “What’s the Netflix piece?”

And Hastings told Fortune:

We are in a new race, and we are a player with some very large and substantial firms. Just to be in that league is an amazing place from where we were.

If there is one takeaway from this year’s Cable Show, it is this: television and media execs cannot get enough Apple.

Of course, the iPhone is so 2008, this year it is all about the iPad.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Paul Bond has a good roundup of media execs salivating over the thin, sexy Apple device, including bigwigs like News Corp. COO Chase Carey and Disney-ABC digital chief Albert Cheng. We already saw what Comcast CEO Brian Roberts did when he got his hands on one of those glass and aluminum tablets.

The iPad, answered Carey, the News Corp. COO and deputy chairman, “actually has a chance to be a transforming event.” And his unprompted praise for Apple’s tablet computer was just getting started.

“That device really gives you a richer media experience,” he said. “You can start to envision how you create a really appealing experience for a consumer in a mobile environment.”

Totally Chase, totally. The next step: teach your boss Rupert Murdoch how to use one of these suckers. And send us the video.

Heavy hitters from the television world, including Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and CBS CEO Leslie Moonves talked “TV Everywhere” during a panel discussion at the 2010 Cable Show in Los Angeles.

Broadcasting & Cable‘s Marisa Guthrie writes that attendees “must have felt a sinking sense of deja vu” at the panel, with attendees largely retreading old arguments.

Still, there were some high points, most notably a demonstration of Comcast’s upcoming “Xfinity Remote” iPad app, which will let users search television content and set their DVR through the device.

Gizmodo has video of the app in action. Check it out.

Related: Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes on CNBC