April 08, 2008 12:04 pm
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Editor’s note: This is part of a series on the 2008 BKD Small Business of the Year finalists. Winners will be named during the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce annual banquet on April 24 at the John Q. Hammons Convention and Trade Center.
By Melissa Dunson
mdunson@joplinglobe.com
For more than 20 years, Charlotte McClure said, the company for which she works has tuned in to customers’ needs.
Joplin has had a cable television company since 1967, and that company has been Cable One since 1987. McClure, general manager of Joplin Cable One, has been with the company for 27 years, and said she hopes it leaves a legacy of customer service and community involvement.
“We’re all part of this community, both personally and professionally,” she said.
Cable One’s top officials sit on boards, donate services and products to area not-for-profit groups, and provide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of airtime for public education and community activities. Cable One donates $500,000 worth of airtime for public-service announcements.
For that involvement — and its business success — Cable One is a finalist for the BKD Small Business of the Year Award in the 11-to-50-employee category. The award will be given later this month at the annual banquet of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce.
Some of the organizations with which Cable One executives are involved are the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, The Bridge, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Rotary, Ronald McDonald House, United Way, Children’s Miracle Network and the Joplin Public Library.
“We feel it’s our responsibility to give back,” said Jeff Denefrio, Cable One marketing manager in Joplin. “We’re a part of Joplin, and Joplin’s a part of us.”
Cable One has more than 750,000 customers in 19 states with video, high-speed Internet and telephone services. The Joplin office has more than 15,000 customers in its service area of Joplin, Webb City, Carterville and the villages surrounding Joplin.
McClure said the Joplin business has grown in the past few years as the local office has expanded beyond television.
Joplin Cable One has 48 employees and two buildings, one on 32nd and Main streets and an advertising department at 11th Street and Illinois Avenue. The separate advertising department is a result of the company’s success in handling the advertising for other area cable companies on top of Cable One’s advertising.
Keeping workers happy is part of the goal, too.
Service and installation crews get their daily assignments online before they leave home in the morning, starting with jobs that are close to their houses. The jobs at the end of the day also are scheduled close to home.
Terry Peacock, Cable One technical operations manager, said the new system has increased employee satisfaction, and uses gasoline and time more efficiently.
Cable One has 58 analog basic channels, 31 digital basic channels, 48 music channels, 38 premium channels and 12 Pay Per View channels. The Joplin company also has two channels that cannot be seen anywhere else: Joplin City News to You, Channel 21, and Joplin Eagle Television, Channel 14.
Denefrio said the company is unveiling an additional five high-definition channels later this year. That will bring the total number of Cable One high-definition channels to 20.
Cable One also serves as the local trigger for the Emergency Alert System in bad weather and for Amber Alert.
For its work in the Joplin area, the local office took home the Chairman’s Award at the company’s annual awards ceremony last year, beating out 50 other systems across the country. The award honored the local system that performed the best overall in a variety of areas including monetary, budgetary, and employee and customer satisfaction.
“I’d like our company to be recognized as a company that could be depended on, and treated both its customers and its employees with respect,” McClure said.
Melissa Dunson is the business writer for The Joplin Globe.
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