Prime Time At Tandem

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James Treybig, president of Tandem Computers Inc., had a problem. His ratings were down. Not his performance ratings. On the contrary, Tandem was going great guns. The recently released figures for the first quarter of fiscal 1983 showed that revenue was 33% higher than the corresponding fiscal 1982 period. No, the problem was his television ratings.

You see, Tandem has a television network that links its corporate headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., via satellite, with 20 of its facilities around the country -- from Los Angeles to Dallas to Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. Every month, Treybig hosts a show called "Tandem Talk," in which he and other officers discuss issues of importance to the whole company. Employees can call in and ask questions on the air. The show runs about two hours and -- as of January -- could be seen by about 2,000 of Tandem's 4,000 employees worldwide. But a lot of them weren't watching. Indeed, only about 500 had tuned in to the January show, and the audience had dwindled to about 200 by the end of it.

"The show was too technical," says Pamela Rosprim, executive producer of Tandem TV. "It was directed too much toward marketing, and a lot of people just didn't care. You know, we were broadcasting to everyone, including janitors and secretaries. The word we were getting back from the company was, 'This isn't meeting our needs. Change your focus.' And so we did."

What they did was to experiment with the show's format. They began using videotape, invited guests to appear, tried to make the language less technical. "We had to learn how to use the medium," says Treybig. "You know, how to get it to be human, and how to make people feel relaxed. We found that if you just sit people down in front of a television camera, they feel naked. So we put a table in front of them, and that set them at ease. Now we have a lot of people joining us. The last show, [our guest was] a saleslady from San Francisco."

"Tandem Talk" is only one of many shows on the Tandem TV network. Nevertheless, the story illustrates the great potential of television as a tool for knitting together a widely scattered company like Tandem. "It is a terrific communications device," says Marilyn Lawrence, Tandem TV's chief engineer. "Once you've set up the network, you can reach everyone in the company for the cost of a single air fare to the East Coast. If that isn't cheap, timely, effective communications, I don't know what is."

Actually, the network is not quite as cheap as all that. By the time Tandem has purchased its transmitter ($600,000) and set up all its receivers ($6,000 to $7,000 each), it will have invested well over $1 million in the operation. And that figure does not include ongoing production expenses or the cost of renting satellite time. But nobody is objecting. "I would say it's universally supported in the company," says Lawrence. "Everybody wants it." Indeed, the major complaint seems to be that, for various reasons, not everyone can get it yet.

Teleconferencing is not new, of course, and other companies have their own television networks -- Hewlett-Packard and Atlantic Richfield, for example. But Tandem -- which had gross revenues of $312 million in fiscal 1982 -- is the first company of its size with in-house, on-line television. More important, it is probably the fastest-growing company in the group "One of the biggest problems of a growing company is that people [in outlying locations] tend to feel cut off from corporate headquarters," notes Lawrence. "So communications is especially important during a period of high growth."

According to Treybig, the idea of using satellites for internal communication grew out of the company's work on Infosat, a network for linking computers by satellite. The first test came in January 1982. "We had several new products to announce, and we needed to get the word out to our marketing and sales support people around the country," says Rosprim. "We thought it might be easier to do this by teleconference than to send around a traveling road show, as we had done in the past." Tandem contacted a satellite vendor and rented hotel facilities for the broadcast. The event took place on January 11, 1982. It was a smashing success. "We immediately got word to start on the next one," says Rosprim. "I mean, like, within the hour."

The second teleconference, in May, was equally successful and encouraged Tandem to look closer at the medium. The marketing people loved it. Teleconferencing saved wear and tear on the traveling staff and eliminated the problem of having news spread by word of mouth. "The question was whether other divisions of the company -- engineers, software designers, trainers -- could benefit as well," says Rosprim. "The answer was a resounding yes." So Tandem decided to set up the television network, which was launched in November with the first edition of "Tandem Talk."

These days, Tandem TV is on the air three to five times a week, with training programs, divisional meetings, and marketing presentations. Rosprim says they are still working out some of the bugs. "Teleconferencing can't and shouldn't replace face-to-face communication. You have to make sure that you don't overlook that need . . . On the production side, we have had some problems with lead time and long-term scheduling."

Secrecy has also become a concern. At the moment, anyone can tune into Tandem's broadcasts, including its competitors. The company plans to rectify the situation by installing encoding devices in the near future.

And the executives have had to get used to the idea of being on camera. "We did some seminars to try to make it a little less intimidating for them, says Rosprim. "We told them not to wear white shirts or paisley ties, things like that."

Nevertheless, some people have had a tendency to freeze up. "This medium is going to change how we pick our executives," joked Ron Downing, Tandem's manager of training development, at a recent symposium. "John Wayne is what we need."

In the meantime, Tandem has James Treybig, who says modestly, "I'll never be a TV star." For the moment, however, he seems to be doing quite well, thank you. His revamped "Tandem Talk" played to rave reviews in February. Ratings soared. The show was saved.