The Cable Show 2010 - Go Beyond

Char Beales

President and CEO
CTAM

Char Beales

Char Beales is President and CEO of CTAM, the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing. Char is an authority on all topics related to cable, particularly from a consumer perspective, including marketing programs, technology trends within the cable and content businesses, and products and services such as digital cable, HDTV, On Demand, cable phone and high-speed Internet.

CTAM is a professional service organization with nearly 6,000 individual members, dedicated to the development of consumer marketing excellence in cable television. CTAM provides its members with a slate of conferences, consumer research, specialized publications, a network of regional chapters, and the CTAM Educational Foundation’s CTAM Executive Management Program at the Harvard Business School. By leveraging its extensive library of research, and contacts, Char is able to provide trade, business, and consumer media with relevant and newsworthy information.

Her track record for successfully bringing cable marketers and communications executives together started with her work in support of the On-Time Guarantee, the first industry-wide initiative of its kind. Today, Beales leads CTAM in a concerted effort to help cable business grow by managing $20 million dollar co-operative marketing program for the 12 largest cable companies to acquire and retain households who are moving. Other collaborative initiatives among CTAM’s 90 member companies bring new products to market.

Prior to joining CTAM, Beales was vice president of program development for COMSAT’s Video Enterprises, a division that provided satellite delivered pay-per-view programming to the U.S. lodging industry. Beales served as vice president of programming and marketing for the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) where she began her cable career in 1980, and as executive director of the National Academy of Cable Programming, which sponsored the CableACE Awards. She has also served as the senior research executive at television stations owned by NBC and CBS and a media buyer at J. Walter Thompson.

Beales demonstrates the unique support the industry’s organizations lend each other, serving on several boards, including CTAM and the CTAM Educational Foundation and The Cable Center in 2009, Beales was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. In 2008, she received the T. Howard Foundation’s Diversity in Media Champion Awards, as well as Promax/BDA’s Brand Builder honor. She was inducted into the Women in Cable & Telecommunication’s Wonder Woman Hall of Fame in 2001. In 1996, Beales received the industry’s highest honor, the National Cab0le Television Association’s (NCTA) Distinguished Vanguard Award for Leadership and received the NCTA Vanguard Award for Marketing in 1995.

Beales is a member of George Washington University’s National Council of the Columbian College and the Advisory Board for GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs. She served as a member of the Advisory Council for the Independent Television Violence Assessment Study. She is a communications graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.


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