Harris/Imagine’s Vogt To Belden: Bring It On

Harris Broadcast chose New York’s Madison Square Garden to announce yesterday that it was splitting into two newly named companies — Imagine Communications (TV production) and GatesAir (TV and radio transmitters).

Perhaps in was that venue that prompted CEO Charlie Vogt to talk a little trash when the subject of Imagine’s principal competition — Belden — came up.

“I think that we are going to out-innovate them,” Vogt said standing on the basketball floor before a couple hundred reporters, industry analysts and customers.

St. Louis-based Belden made itself a Harris/Imagine rival by purchasing Miranda in 2012 for $332 million and Grass Valley earlier this year for $220 million. It is combining the two companies under the Grass Valley brand.

“I worry that they…don’t understand where the industry is going — IP, software, cloud,” Vogt said. “Today, they make cables and wires. The fact that they are calling the division Grass Valley says a lot about their mentality about hardware.”

“The Imagine Communications side of our business is moving to a very dynamic software environment and I’m not sure that that is in the DNA of that company.”

Imagine has an opportunity to pick up business while Belden wrestles with the integration of Miranda and Grass Valley over the next 18 months, Vogt said. “(We) are going to work really hard and really fast and we are going to get ahead of the curve and we are going to nestle ourselves up with our customers to make sure that we are a year, 18 months, two years ahead of where they are at.”

But the advantage will not last forever, he said.

While running companies that competed with Cisco Systems in the past, Vogt said his colleagues would say that Cisco’s rapid pace of acquisitions would slow its ability of innovate. “I always told the team Cisco is going to figure it out and they did.”

“I think we have to take a competitive position that Belden is going to figure it out,” he said.

Vogt also said Imagine may have some more such figuring to do. It is likely to make some acquisitions of smaller companies so that it can fulfill its promise to provide end-to-end TV production systems, he said.

“You are going to see us being very opportunistic,” he said. “I think there are some really great innovative companies that align with our strategy and, if can get there faster with them, I think you are going to see us being pretty bold and aggressive on the M&A front, especially over the next year.”

Investment firm The Gores Group bought Harris Broadcast from defense contractor Harris Communications a year ago for $225 million.

Vogt also said that the decision to put the transmitter business into a “truly independent and separate” company, GatesAir, should not be interpreted as a move toward Gores’ selling the company.

It is merely a recognition that GatesAir is in a different business than Imagine, despite their common customers, he said.

Vogt said that he is CEO or both companies and that the two companies will have a partnership so that they can serve existing and future consumers like broadcasters who are in production and transmission.