Louisville, Colorado, September 23, 1997—The Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs®) Board of Directors has approved allowing cable television operators based in South America, Central America and the Caribbean to join the research and development consortium. The action came at a regularly scheduled Board meeting.

A committee of the Board has been established to study any governance issues that might be associated with the change. This committee is to report back to the Executive Committee in November for final action.

The Board created a new seat of Director Emeritus and voted to have Richard Leghorn, who is considered the "father" of CableLabs, fill that seat. Leghorn is a cable industry pioneer and had been an advocate for creation of CableLabs, including funding some early studies on CableLabs organization.

In other action, the Board elected Marcus Communications Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Marcus to the CableLabs Board of Directors, succeeding Leo Hindery. Hindery resigned earlier this year when he was named President and COO of Tele-Communications, Inc.

Until now, CableLabs membership had been open only to cable system operators based in North America. The consortium represents 85% of cable subscribers in the United States, 80% of subscribers in Canada and 12% of subscribers in Mexico.

CableLabs members pay dues to the consortium of two cents (U.S.) per subscriber per month. That dues rate would apply to any new members as well, the Board stated. There are approximately 9.5 million cable television subscribers in Latin America.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org.

CableLabs® is a registered trademark of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. Other CableLabs marks are listed at http://www.cablelabs.com/certqual/trademarks. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.