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This story has been corrected.
Gregg Fujimoto is the new president at Oceanic Time Warner Cable.
He was born on the mainland and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley but has "1,000 aunties, 1,000 uncles and 1,000 cousins" in Hawaii and spent his youth traveling back and forth between the islands and the mainland, he told TheBuzz.
"I’m literally coming home."
He was transferred to Hawaii after initially joining Time Warner Cable in 2012 as senior vice president of brand strategy and marketing communications for residential services. He was based in New York City, following some 20 years in the advertising industry.
Fujimoto "has a proven track record of leading companies through a rapidly changing business landscape," said John Keib, Time Warner Cable executive vice president and chief care and technical operations officer for residential services, in a statement.
Fujimoto succeeds Bob Barlow, who retired after a 34-year career in the cable industry, the last 31⁄2 years with Oceanic.
Barlow and predecessors Nate Smith and Don Carroll laid a solid foundation from which he can move forward, Fujimoto said.
The new boss has held the reins since early March but began his transition at the beginning of the year. "I am an avid scholar of how things are being done here," he said.
The company employs roughly 1,000 people around the state in various departments, from engineering to billing, from marketing and sales to warehousing and, of course, customer service, among others.
"We try and give everyone the autonomy and authority" to do their jobs the best they can for the company’s customers, he said.
Oceanic’s mission is to give its cable, Internet and telephone customers "what they want, when they want it and how they want it … and, ultimately, where they want it," Fujimoto said.
"The technology is so shiny now" that a company goal is "to get it into more people’s hands" and to integrate it all, to make the products and services "simple, useful and meaningful," he said.
The concept of "democratizing technology, for us as a carrier, is to make technology more affordable" and easier for the consumer to enjoy in more places, he said.
He believes consumers always have driven advances and upgrades in technology.
"It’s always been my business philosophy that operational excellence and technology execution are how you manage a business. You truly lead a business through consumer insight," Fujimoto said.
Further expansion of wireless Internet access, or Wi-Fi, is among the many priorities on Fujimoto’s to-do list.
"Right now we’re at over 1,000 locations. I do believe we’ll go statewide; that’s our intent," he said, though he acknowledged some "hurdles" to overcome in remote or otherwise geographically challenging areas around the islands.
As for high-speed Internet, "we are in the top tier of Time Warner Cable. … It’s my position to keep it in the top tier," Fujimoto said.
The new Oceanic president has been transferred to Hawaii’s sole cable TV operator during a momentous season for the cable industry and for Oceanic itself, as a merger between parent company Time Warner Cable and Comcast is contemplated.
"At this point the merger itself is so far off, I’m not at liberty to comment" on it, he said.
Otherwise, Fujimoto agreed this is a critical time, with great potential in the cable industry. It is a "pivotal point for the consumer," he said.
"They have access to so many different ways to consume products," such as watching TV, getting on the Internet and talking on the phone.
Sometimes consumers’ ability to watch certain broadcast networks gets interrupted as retransmission consent agreements expire while Time Warner Cable and the various networks’ parent companies negotiate.
Some of the resulting agreements allow local viewing of some networks’ programming via the Internet in addition to on TV, but not all of them.
"The intricacies of retransmission consent agreements are so complicated," he said, adding that the agreements are made at the corporate level, not locally.
The same is true of a long-standing and still up-in-the-air push for a la carte programming, which would allow subscribers to pay only for the cable channels they view and not for channels they spend zero time watching.
New data from the Nielsen Co. indicates that despite a record number of 189 channels received in the average home, consumers consistently tune in to an average of only 17 channels.
The audience measurement company announced the data in advance of releasing its Advertising & Audiences Report, which finds that more content does not necessarily equate to consumption of more channels.
Fujimoto also is aware of the need for large businesses in Hawaii to help the community, which he called "the foundation of the business itself." Under his leadership, Oceanic will continue to help nonprofit and community groups in various ways, he said.
On a more personal level, as he settles in to the isle-style life, some favorite local foods he’s identified thus far are Spam musubi and poke.
"I’ve actually turned on my mainland friends in New York City to poke," he laughed.
——— Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
CORRECTION: Don Carroll is the former Oceanic president. An earlier version of this story and the story in Wednesday’s paper identified him as John Carroll.
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