“Fundamentally, the cable business is really an infrastructure business. We need to think about how to evolve our infrastructure so it’s flexible to not only offer and scale today’s products but be prepared to offer the products our customers will want tomorrow.”
Steve Miron is discussing one of his favorite topics — the future of the industry he quite literally grew up with. After decades in the trenches — including at the helm of Bright House Networks alongside his sister (and fellow honoree) Nomi Bergman — as CEO of Advance/Newhouse, he now advises some of cable’s most senior executives, including those at Discovery and Charter Communications, on whose boards he sits.
“I’ve had a unique opportunity to be involved on the distribution side and on the content side with a variety of companies, whether Time Warner Cable or Bright House or Charter and Discovery, and to watch the way those companies think,” he said. “It’s been really fascinating. It’s been a great journey.”
Also: Welcome to the 30th Anniversary of the ‘B+C’ Hall of Fame
Miron’s journey began back in high school, selling cable services door-to-door and via telemarketing. After college, he had stints at Newhouse cable properties MetroVision in Chicago, Vision Cable in Charlotte, North Carolina, and NewChannels in upstate New York. When the Newhouse family combined operations with Time Warner Cable in 1994-95, Miron stopped working directly for the family business and went to work for TWC for the better part of a decade.
Steve Miron built the best service organization as CEO of Bright House, and it became a model for the industry.”
— Tom Rutledge, chairman/CEO, Charter
He stepped into the spotlight in 2003 with the launch of Bright House, in conjunction with TWC. “Steve Miron built the best service organization as CEO of Bright House, and it became a model for the industry,” Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said. “Today he continues to lead through his board positions at Charter and Discovery with the same great values he used as CEO.”
Some of those values Miron is proud to say he gleaned from the family patriarch, Robert Miron. “I definitely learned from my father about being a good listener,” he said. “Listening is hugely important and underrated, and I still work at that all the time.”
In fact, the opportunity to work with his family was one of Miron’s favorite parts of the Bright House experience. “We were partnered with Time Warner Cable at the time but we had [free rein] of how we wanted to put Bright House together, how we wanted to organize it, even what we wanted to call it,” he said.
The feeling was mutual. “I have the deepest respect for my brother, and it’s a really wonderful feeling knowing he’ll always be here for me and I’ll always be here for him,” said Bergman. “And I also really enjoy my time with him. He makes me laugh so hard.”
The naming process was a journey unto itself, with the team landing on the Bright House moniker that made it stand out from the pack from day one. “It was definitely a little bit different for the industry,” Miron said.
The team had rights to some of the legacy Newhouse brands but decided to take a different route. “We put together a group and a process, and we talked about what we wanted to be as a company. We wanted to be a customer-focused company, and we wanted to have a name that was customer-focused. Bright House emerged as the leading contender, and it was a name that was what we aspired to be,” Miron said.
Super-Serving the Customer
That customer focus enabled the company to super-serve subscribers and gave Bright House an edge in an increasingly competitive landscape. “We had one of the first Verizon Fios overbuilds in the country in our markets, in Texas and Florida, and we had a strong brand in those markets and we were a good competitor,” he said. “As time wore on and we saw more competition in video and broadband from overbuilders, having that customer focus was something that was important to our competitive stance.”
Former Cox Communications CEO Patrick Esser said Miron offers a unique mix of skills for a cable executive. “I appreciate Steve for his thoughtful leadership and ability to build strong industry relationships,” he said. “I’m very excited to see him recognized.”
As the industry keeps evolving, Miron looks to its roots to serve as a bellwether. “I have a real appreciation for just how wonderfully flexible our architecture is, how powerful it is, and how the business has been made with a great entrepreneurial spirit, and great engineering as well,” he said. “The industry has done a really nice job building and scaling flexible architecture to offer an amazing array of products that really changed people’s lives.” ￭
