Technology >> CEO Interviews >> November 13, 2000
ROBERT B. CLASEN serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ICTV,
Inc., a provider of the cable industry's most robust solution for
delivery of broadband Internet TV services to digital set-tops.
Throughout his 25-year career, he has served in a variety of senior
positions in the cable television and telecommunications industries. In
the cable television industry, his former positions include President of
Comcast Cable Communications, one of the country's five largest cable
television companies in the mid 1980s. Mr. Clasen directed that business
as it increased fivefold in a six-year period, providing service to over
2.3 million homes. Prior to that, he was Vice President of US Operations
for Rogers Communications in Toronto, Canada, where he guided the US
Division from its inception to a position as one of the top 10 multiple
system operators. He served as Divisional President for McCaw Cellular
Communications (now AT&T) and was responsible for the development of the
company's cellular telephone properties in the Southwest, including its
interests in the LA Cellular Telephone Company and the Bay Area Cellular
Telephone Company. Those businesses comprise a population in excess of
25 million. In 1999 he served as Interim Chairman of Vivid Technologies,
a video-on-demand (VOD) system provider that merged with Concurrent
Computer Corporation. Mr. Clasen was President and CEO of ComStream
Corporation, an international provider of digital transmission solutions
for voice, data, imaging, audio and video applications for satellite and
terrestrial broadband systems, before its sale in 1998. His
international experience includes serving as President of Comcast's
International Division in London, England during the late 1980s and
again with Comcast heading its International Division in the mid-1990s.
He began his business experience as a Manager with Continental
Cablevision (now Media One). During his career, he has served as a
member of the National Academy of Cable Programming Board of Governors,
Director of the Cable Television Administration and Marketing
Association (CTAM), and Director of the Cable Television Advertising
Bureau (CAB). Mr. Clasen has received national recognition for his
outstanding leadership from a variety of organizations, including
Industry Week Magazine, Women in Cable, Channels Magazine, and Irish
America Magazine, and was selected by Cable Television Business as
Executive of the Year in 1988. Mr. Clasen is a graduate of Bowling Green
State University in Ohio, where he earned his graduate degree in
Counseling Psychology. Profile
Mr. Clasen: ICTV was founded in the early 1990s by some engineers who
were starting to think about how signals would be transmitted
