THE cable guy shipped over to sort out NTL is settling in quickly.
“Hey,” says Stephen Burch, cutting across one of my questions, “anyone tell you that you look like Hank Azaria?” Sorry? The Hank on The Larry Sanders Show? “Nah,” says Burch, grinning wickedly, “he’s really bald. I mean the actor that does the Simpsons voices. It’s a compliment, honest. So, what was the question?” I can’t remember. Burch, a 56-year-old American Anglophile with precisely three months’ experience of working here, laughs loudly. He looks like he’s enjoying himself.
But surely that’s a mistake, as everyone knows that NTL, mid-merger with rival cable company Telewest and about to swallow up Virgin Mobile, is a company famous for lurching from crisis to crisis. Bust, reborn, soon to be renamed Virgin Something — don’t take my word for it, Burch told me, they just have to work out what the Something will be.
Who’d throw in a safe job at American cable giant Comcast to come to run this? “Actually I got the call several years ago,” says Burch, “from Telewest. But my wife was ill and there was speculation that Telewest and NTL might merge, and I said to the headhunters then, if it happens, get back to me.”
They did, and his wife is better, and after decades in Baltimore, the Burches decided there was only one place they would leave Maryland for, and that was England. Burch cites another three reasons for coming: John Milton, John Donne and Ben Jonson. He’s an English literature graduate — and a lawyer, and a Vietnam veteran — and this is a trip he really wanted to make.
As for the difficulties of integrating two large workforces,then rebranding the lot and infusing a completely new, Virgin-style corporate ethos — and that’s before they even compete in the media marketplace — not a problem, he says. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the similarities between here and what I’m used to seeing. NTL and Telewest do wonderful things but also do things that need to be improved.”
Burch was installed in January, pushing aside NTL’s previous boss, Simon Duffy, who plotted the coup of bidding for Virgin Mobile. No sentiment there.
“Look, I don’t want to be seen as the typical ugly American who comes in trouncing everything,” interrupts Burch. “I’m not responsible for the decision that Duffy is not CEO, but I’m the beneficiary of it.”
He was hired, he says, simply because he has long experience of acquisition and integration in America, most recently when Comcast bought AT&T Broadband — jumping from 8.5m customers to 22m — and that’s experience NTL needs now.
“I’ve been aggressively involved in integrations since 1999. I don’t know any other way,” he says. “The business practices at AT&T and perception of customer service were so bad, yet we were able to inspire the management and empower that whole new company . . .”
Sitting in NTL’s modern head office outside Basingstoke in Hampshire, Burch is an eloquent persuader — confident, aggressive, quick to return a quip but deadly serious about his business aims. With his chunky build and lived-in features he looks like he’s ready to rumble.
He’ll need that to tackle the problems at NTL, a British-based company that’s listed in America (source of its original backing), and often promised more than it has delivered since its inception as CableTel in 1993. But now, with the prospect of carrying Virgin’s powerful name and being Britain’s monopoly cable supplier — 5.2m customers on the books — things could be looking up.
In particular, with the acquisition of Virgin Mobile, NTL will be the only company able to supply a package of television, broadband, fixed line and mobile telephony — ‘four-play’ as Burch cutely calls it. The key question is, do consumers really want it? Burch makes a face. “Sure, there is no four-play in America yet but three-play (fixed-line telephone, broadband and television) worked fine in Comcast, we were getting more customers and more revenue. I don’t know why the sceptics say that it doesn’t work, but maybe the information is coming from competitors who cannot deliver three-play and through relationships they have with the media.”
Nice try but it is analysts, not competitors such as BSkyB (37.7% owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Sunday Times) and BT, who are driving the scepticism.
Then there is the rebranding to sort out. Sir Richard Branson implied last week that he would let NTL take on the Virgin name only when customer care had been addressed to his satisfaction. Burch brushes that aside. “We’re allowed to use the name immediately. We bought it and we are paying for it. We want their belief, of course, that we have improved our customer standard but that’s so subjective.”
Will he spend more on customer service? “We’ll spend what we need to spend to get it better. I don’t know if that means more money or shifting resources or identifying people to do it. It’s not worse than in some acquisitions I have made, like AT&T.”
Will he integrate Virgin Mobile? “We’ll leave it mostly standalone from the start of the year. That doesn’t mean we won’t market it from the close of the deal.”
Will he bid for the rights to show Premiership football? “Can’t say. I don’t want to reveal my hand.”
And what about the big beasts stomping around inside NTL? The company’s American chairman, Jim Mooney, debt raider Bill Huff, who may be looking for another American group to buy the company, and Branson himself? Burch shrugs. He hasn’t heard from Huff, Branson has been brilliant, and Mooney’s a very smart man. “I’ll take direction from anyone who adds value. I want this to be a success. What did George Bernard Shaw say? A good writer borrows, a great writer steals — hey, I’ve always wanted to quote Shaw, get that in!” Burch’s enthusiasm is infectious. The Brits around him like what they see. “He’s seasoned, robust and his own man,” says Duffy, now vice-chairman of NTL. “He’s not going to be intimidated.”
That’s carried Burch through a career that saw him fall into cable by chance. Born in Washington, the son of a federal judge, he was earmarked for a career in law, along with his four siblings, when a college job selling cable door-to-door led to an offer to join the management.
Before that, he did two years drafted to Vietnam in the Military Police. Yes, he did fight, even though he was a “reluctant warrior”.
He spent his early cable career moving from city to city — “every promotion was a move” — and rose finally to become president of Comcast’s Atlantic division, where he developed his reputation as an efficient integrator of acquired companies.
More recently, however, he has drawn flak for putting politicians’ relatives (including the Maryland governor’s wife) on the Comcast payroll. That came up again in a story run by the Washington Post only last week. Is that why he’s here? Burch shakes his head. “Come on, the governor elections are coming up and the Washington Post doesn’t like the fact that the Maryland governor is Republican and is trying to embarrass him. It’s much ado about nothing. The irony is I’m a Democrat.”
Anyway, he has enough on his plate over here. There is the mooted listing of NTL in London — the board is looking at the possibility — then there are the opportunities offered by the “unbundling of the local loop”, allowing rivals on to BT’s lines.
“It’s new to me so I’m looking at what it means. We pass 51% of British homes, it allows me to get to the other 49%. It could be enormous.”
Then there is the chance of selling a plug-in kit, offering a broadband, video and phone service, through Virgin shops. “It accounted for 30% of our installation activity in America.”
On the home front, he’s got his wife and youngest son moving over in the summer, a new house in Surrey to move into, a ton of sightseeing on his list — every weekend, he does a different town or city.
What does he sort out first? Everything, it seems. “I employ people who can multi-task,” he grins. “It’s the culture I come from.”
Just don’t call him chunky. “Are you really going to call me that?” he asks at the end, when I suggest he may not have the build to fit into a new Mini (he wants to buy one). He gives me a sharp look. “I take it back, you are Hank from The Larry Sanders Show.”
Stephen Burch's working day
THE NTL chief executive is living in a rented flat in Surrey before he moves into a new home. “I wake at about 6.30am,” says Stephen Burch, “breakfast on tea and a muffin, and then drive myself to work.”
He is usually in his office at NTL’s base in Hook, Hampshire, by 8am. “Then it’s on the phone or in meetings — we have so many things to discuss, how to organise the company, changes and improvements, so my day is very full.”
He is in London one day a week. “I spend a lot of time with analysts and business leaders. The only way you get to know the issues you’ve got to deal with is getting out and meeting people.” He cooks for himself when he gets home — pasta and hamburgers. “But your ready-to-eat meals are really good here, particularly the Indian ones.”
Vital statistics
Born: December 23, 1949
Marital status: married, four children
School: Woodrow Wilson High School, Washington DC
Universities: Maryland and Gonzaga Law School, Spokane
First job: Burger King flipper
Salary package: $1.5m, including bonus
Homes: Surrey, Maryland and West Virginia
Car: grey Volvo X70
Favourite book: The Tempest
Favourite music: The Beatles
Favourite film: Casablanca
Favourite gadget: 60Gb iPod
Last holiday: Bermuda
Downtime
STEPHEN BURCH relaxes outside NTL by soaking up the sights of Britain. “I’m going to places mostly outside London — Portsmouth, Southampton, the Cotswolds, Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, Dover. I even drove to France once just to say I’ve used the Chunnel. And the buildings — the other day I had lunch in a building dating back to the year 947. I had to ring people back home just to tell them.”
In America he used to ski a bit, but never played golf. “It’s difficult to play golf and still be married. Most of my time was spent with my kids, taking them to various events.” As well as the main home in Baltimore, he has a holiday house in West Virginia. “It’s a large old cabin built in the 1800s, kind of a retreat.”
He jokes that most of his money, however, now goes on college tuition fees.
