But the building may not be without a brokerage house for long. Industry sources say that Dean Witter is being wooed as a tenant.
Hanging by a Cable
Talk about market penetration! Cox Cable San Diego, the nation's largest cable system, reaches about 66% of its potential audience--about 260,000 customers out of 400,000 possible clients.
Typically, a 30%-to-50% penetration is considered excellent.
But Cox officials refuse to be complacent. They've launched a direct-mail drive to lure non-subscribing homes.
If all potential customers signed on to Cox, there would be only 22,000 homes that Cox currently couldn't serve because of lack of cabling, according to Moya Gallaher, director of marketing.
"We'd be happy if we got (an increase) of a couple of points in the next couple of years," she said. "We want to attract those people who have never had cable and we want to reattract our former customers who've disconnected."
Disconnects are indeed a concern to Cox and other cable operators. The disconnect rate for basic cable service is about 3%. But pay-service disconnects for programs such as Home Box Office, Showtime, the Disney Channel and the Playboy Channel are much higher--about 77% in San Diego.
In other cities, Gallaher said, pay service disconnects run as high as 110%.
And why is San Diego so heavily cabled? Long before the national cable craze, the only way for most county residents to pick up more than four local stations was via cable, leading to a big demand for the service.
