NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow is the featured guest on C-SPAN’s The Communicators program this week. The video is now available online, and will air on Saturday at 6:30pm on C-SPAN.

For more thoughts on the interview, check out John Eggerton’s preview of the show in Broadcasting & Cable.

UPDATE: Just a reminders that The Communicators also airs Monday on C-SPAN2 at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET. You can also subscribe to the show’s podcast. If you’re interested in seeing the comments about Google, they appear about the 17:45 mark.

NCTA’s annual conference The Cable Show is coming up soon. The 58th Annual Convention and International Exposition will be held in Washington, DC in less than seven weeks; you can follow details about the event on the Show’s blog or by following CableShow on Twitter.

Today, my colleague Joy Sims has prepared a report on a pretty cool exhibit we’ll be having at The Cable Show: Broadband Nation.

Talking about the benefits of broadband and how we can expand the number of Americans with high-speed connections is all the rage here in Washington, especially as Congress deliberates over an economic stimulus bill that may include billions for broadband.

Those of us in Cable Land think the attention on broadband is long overdue, and as the nation’s largest provider of broadband service with a near national and scalable network that is delivering market-leading speeds, we are excited to jump aboard the broadband train.

So, what are the many ways which consumers can benefit from broadband?  You can see for yourself at a 22,000 square-foot Broadband Nation exhibit that will be the centerpiece of NCTA’s annual Cable Show being held April 1 -3 at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center.

This large-scale broadband exhibit will demonstrate how consumers can use broadband in their homes, communities and beyond.  Details about the exhibit were announced last week, and we’ll be sharing more information in the coming weeks.

Broadband Nation is being designed to replicate real communities anywhere in America and will include urban, suburban and rural settings.  These communities will be complete with an entertainment center, school, medical clinic and small business.  To the left, you can see a small-scale mockup of what Broadband Nation will look like on the show floor.

Visitors to the exhibit will have hands-on access to see how the latest – and future – broadband technology can be integrated into a suburban home or an urban loft; a school; a small business; and a health clinic.  A cable company’s office – also located within the exhibit – will help guide the operations within the communities.

Technology to be on display will include:

• Next generation, ultra fast high-speed Internet (aka DOCSIS 3.0) demo provided by Comcast
• RF Over Glass (RFOG) fiber-to-the-home
• WiMAX Mobile Broadband
• tru2way TVs
• Broadband-based, whole-home automation and entertainment solutions
• Comcast’s HITS AxIS service which Multichannel wrote about following its introduction last May
• Specialized medical technology for health clinics, such as telehealth applications
• Enhanced RV-based applications for home
• 3-D TV

Want to register or learn more about The Cable Show?  Check out www.thecableshow.com where the lineup of speakers, sessions and activities is available and constantly being updated.

In my first post, I thought I’d give you a little background on myself.

I have worked in the cable industry for 16 years. I’ve always been around the film and television business; my father worked for a broadcast network for 20 years. I’m a voracious TV viewer and always have been. Still, all of my time in cable continues to be a learning experience.

Cable is heading into its 60th year in 2008, but it’s a dramatically different business than it was in the late Forties. In the early Seventies, I had cable as a kid because we lived north of L.A. and television signals were blocked by mountains; without cable, you couldn’t see TV at all. By high school, there were new channels like A&E and Superstation TBS. I vividly remember a show called “Pop Clips” on Nickelodeon, which was the pilot for MTV.

By the time I entered the cable business in the early Nineties, the technology was beginning to undergo some dramatic changes. Cable modems showed up in the market in 1994. I was at the panel where John Malone (then of TCI) made his famous pronouncement about a new world with “500 channels,” a remark misunderstood at the time, since he was talking more about increased bandwidth through digital compression that he was speaking of programming networks. Since then, digital cable, video-on-demand, telephony — all these services have changed the cable industry.

Now we’re in 2008, and NCTA has launched this blog in order to discuss these issues online. At CableTechTalk, we will be examining many of the current trends in broadband and telecommunications. As a consumer myself, I’m just as anxious as you may be for things to keep changing and getting better all the time. That’s why we welcome your input here as well, since we all have a vested interest in the technology that delivers us out entertainment and information to thrive.

Let the dialogue begin!