BETA RESEARCH CABLE OPERATOR STUDY – EVALUATION OF BASIC NETWORKS

A telephone survey among cable operators will be conducted in November. Question areas include the following:

1. Basic Network Companies Most Helpful for Broadband and High Speed Internet Efforts – Operators will be asked to name unaided the five basic network programmers that are most helpful.

2. Basic Network Companies Most Helpful for High Definition Television – Operators will be asked to name unaided the five basic network companies that, so far, will be most helpful in this new area

3. Basic Networks with Best Marketing Support – Operators will be asked to name unaided the five basic networks that provide them with the best overall marketing support services.

4. Importance of Networks – Operators indicate whether the network is very important, fairly important or unimportant to their cable system.

5. Perceived Value of Networks – Operators will be asked to estimate the amount per subscriber the network is worth to their system.

6. Evaluation of Video on Demand – Operators will be asked to rate on a 5-point scale how helpful the network is with helping organizations with operator efforts on video on demand.

7. Evaluation of Affiliate Web Site – For each site visited, operators will rate the affiliate web site on a scale of 5 to 1 where “5” means “Excellent” and “1” means “Poor.”

8. Whether respondent met with affiliate representative in past six months.

9. Evaluation of Affiliate Representatives – Operators will rate the affiliate representatives of each basic network company on a scale of 5 to 1 where “5” means “Excellent” and “1” means “Poor.” (Due to questionnaire length, this question would actually be included in the Cable Operator Carriage Study questionnaire.)

Networks measured include:

A&E, ABC Family, AMC, Animal Planet, , Bravo, CNBC, CNN, Cartoon Network, C-SPAN, Country Music Television, Comedy Central, Court TV, Discovery Channel, Disney Channel, E!, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, Food Network, FX, Fox News Channel, G4, GSN, Hallmark Channel, History Channel, Home & Garden TV, TLC, Lifetime, MSNBC, MTV, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, Outdoor Life, Oxygen, Sci-Fi Channel, SOAPnet, Spike TV, TBS, TNT, Toon Disney, The Travel Channel, Turner Classic Movies, TV Guide Channel, TV Land, VH1, USA, Weather Channel, WE and WGN.