OPERATORS HAVE A NEW MESSAGE : CABLE OFFERS MORE THAN MERE TV

While mugs and T-shirts were among the most popular souvenirs, programmers at the annual cable television convention hope visitors walked away Wednesday with a more important message--that, as a video clip by the educational Discovery Channel put it, there is more to television than just more television.

According to the cable-television industry, there are now more than 50 networks--or national programming services--offered. They range from Cable News Network and ESPN, with more than 40 million potential viewers, to tiny programming services such as the Gospel Music Network, reaching some 2 million households.

With cable television now expected to reach 50% of U.S. homes this year, those who provide the programs say there is increasing pressure on cable operators to provide a stronger mix of programming to attract and hold subscribers.

“You have to create value for the home viewer,” said Marc Lustgarten, president of Rainbow Program Enterprises, whose services include the American Movie Classics channel and Bravo, which offers international films and cultural programs.

Rainbow was among the more than 200 exhibitors at the 36th annual National Cable Television Assn. convention, which closed here Wednesday. To underscore his contention that the cable industry no longer is driven solely by hardware, Rainbow put up a big eye-catching booth complete with a soda counter, a juke box and dancers.

Cable’s future, Lustgarten said, will depend on giving consumers value for their money and providing proprietary programming--including “narrowcasting” to specific audiences--that is not available elsewhere.

“We are emerging as a force that can be equal to broadcasters,” he said. “We are becoming a clear alternative selection for consumers. That is a very big change.”

Lustgarten also believes that consumers will be willing to pay up to $50 a month for cable television “as long as they get value.”

There were a wide variety of approaches to that proposition on view here.

Home Box Office said that it was launching a new family-oriented pay service called Festival, which includes recent movie releases, classic films and comedy specials. It is aimed at an audience of older and younger viewers that HBO feels are largely uninterested in the abundance of R-rated movies available on conventional pay channels.

On another front, cable’s interest in home shopping was apparent by the large crowds that gathered around the Fashion Channel, which is scheduled to go on the air in August and whose executives hope to have 20 million viewers in three years.

“The response has been tremendous,” said one company executive.

While the Fashion Channel is looking for broad appeal to people between the ages of 25 and 50, other programmers are looking for very specific audiences.

Next door to the Fashion Channel was a small exhibit arranged like a black directors’ chairs bore the large initials GMN--for the Gospel Music Network.

“It’s a Christian MTV,” explained Don Cameron, an executive with the Albuquerque, N.M.-based company. Gospel Music Network is totally supported by advertising and has no preaching, its executives said.

“It’s a mistake for cable to go down the path of creating broad-brush networks,” said William H. Airy, who heads the service. “The future of cable is to identify segments of the population and to develop programs that appeal to those groups.”

Interest in targeting specific audiences and subjects has produced a variety of programming services in cable television, ranging from the 24-hour Weather Channel to arts programming, programming for the deaf and new ventures such as the “motivation” network that is expected to be launched this fall.

At the convention, programmers handed out everything from red tote bags from the Turner Broadcasting System to chocolate stamped with A&E;, for the Arts & Entertainment Network. Many held news conferences to announce changes and expansion plans for their services.

Among the more crowded was one called to announce a name change. In the future, the PTL Satellite Network will be called the Inspirational Network.

“It’s basically an image change,” said Neil Eskeline--obviously undertaken to distance the religious programming service from the scandal at its parent PTL Ministries. He said, however, that the network has lost only three of its 171 affiliates since the publicity about Jim Bakker.