Following is an expanded version of Shirley Brady's interview with Matt Strauss, Comcast's VP of video on demand programming investments.

Shirley Brady: A lot of the opportunities for start-up digital networks at Comcast these days is on VOD: specifically, on your Select on Demand lineup of virtual VOD categories. Talk about how things have changed at Comcast since you were hired to head up this effort.

Matt Strauss: We are on track to achieve the billion views for video on demand that Brian Roberts spoke about earlier in the year. As each month goes on we continue to show growth in the number of views, and even in the percent of our digital subscriber base that is using this new technology. Roughly 60 to 70% of all digital subs use on demand every month. So when we look at the landscape it's really clear that the future of television is not going to be adding channel 343 to the digital lineup, but it's going to be to migrate more and more programming over to on demand, which really is a superior way to watch programming.

More here: »www.cableworld.com/cgi/cw/show_m···sts.htm