Comcast Media Center’s Retail Narrowcasting Pilot Drives Awareness and Sales of Cable’s HDTV Offering in Retail

Denver, CO, July 19, 2004 – Comcast Media Center (CMC), Comcast’s Denver Market and Ultimate Electronics conducted a highly successful pilot of narrowcasting technology in a retail setting, increasing sales of Comcast’s HDTV offering five times more than sales during a comparable pre-pilot period. CTAM has selected the pilot as one of its retail case study winners and invited the CMC to present its findings during the “Award Winning Retail Success Stories” session at the 2004 CTAM Summit in Boston, on Monday, July 19, from 2:30 - 3:45 pm (ET).

The narrowcasting pilot sought to determine how the production of high end, native HD content with Comcast branding would affect the levels of customer awareness and sales of Comcast Cable’s HDTV offering, and Ultimate Electronics’ ability to sell more HDTV television sets.

As part of the pilot, the CMC created content for two “virtual channels” that were delivered to the stores using narrowcasting technology. The primary channel served the television monitors on the retailer’s display wall by providing programming clips from TV networks featured on the Comcast lineup and included a promotional message encouraging shoppers to ask a sales clerk about Comcast’s current offer. The second channel served an HDTV set in a prominent location on the store floor and displayed a sales video containing customer education information about HDTV, content from HDTV networks carried by Comcast and the details for Comcast’s HDTV service offering.

“With more than 10 million consumers slated to purchase HDTV-capable television sets over the next 18 months, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, cable will benefit from the enhanced presence in retail environments that narrowcasting can provide,” stated Leslie Russell, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Comcast Media Center who will present the case study at CTAM. “A successful retail campaign needs to provide tangible benefits to both the cable system operator and the retailer, and this pilot shows that a narrowcasting platform has the potential to deliver on this critical objective by using an efficient one-to-many delivery system that also permits customizing the content for each location.”

The CMC trial illustrated narrowcasting’s potential as a marketing tool for retailers as well as for cable operators. For example, featuring native content in HDTV such as Denver’s Red Rocks amphitheater helped to attract the pilot stores’ shoppers to the HDTV monitors and in-store sales promotions. In addition to providing the retailer greater control over the content being displayed inside each store, narrowcasting represents a turnkey solution, by permitting content management from one national location.

Narrowcasting is a “one-to-many” means for delivering content from a central location to designated sites, such as outlets of a retail chain. Features of the server-based technology include the ability to target content segments, such as market-specific details on advertising campaigns, to each site.

The pilot took place in two Denver area outlets owned and operated by Denver-based Ultimate Electronics, a leading specialty retailer of home entertainment and consumer electronics products. The company operates 65 stores in 14 states under the Ultimate Electronics® and SoundTrack® trade names.

About Comcast Media Center
Comcast Media Center (CMC), a business unit of Comcast Cable, provides a total content management solution through its “one source –multiple delivery platforms” capabilities. Its Content Delivery Network offers global transmission via satellite and terrestrial fiber optics, VOD and streaming distribution capabilities. CMC’s Content Management Network offers broadcast quality studio, mobile and post production services, origination services for linear TV networks and live events, HDTV production and origination and quality control and media management services, including encoding and storage. Its Affiliate Services Network includes the HITS (Headend In The Sky) digital platform, founded in 1994, delivers 150 digital services to more than 2,000 cable system headends. More information is available at: http://www.comcastmediacenter.com/

Headquartered in Philadelphia, Comcast Cable is a division of Comcast Corporation, a developer, manager and operator of broadband cable networks and provider of programming content. With a presence in 22 of the top 25 United States markets, Comcast is one of the leading communications, media and entertainment companies in the world. Providing basic cable, Digital Cable, high-speed Internet and telephone services, Comcast is the company to look to first for the communications products and services that connect people to what’s important in their lives. The company’s 59,000 employees serve more than 21 million customers.