C-COR's CEOs
Big successes often start with small ideas. In the early '50s, John McLucas (right) and two business partners, George Haller and Walter Brown--all three Penn State University physicists--saw intriguing potential in a new invention called television. They formed Community Engineering Corporation (the C-COR name was given in 1964) and began installing and repairing TV antennas. Then the trio saw a better way. They built a master antenna on the roof of Brown's home to amplify transmission signals and ran wires to their neighbors' TV sets. Voila! Cable TV had come to State College via the first cable powering system in the U.S. McLucas served as company president from 1953 to 1958, guiding the development, design, and manufacture of amplifiers and related equipment, as well as the operation of cable-TV systems in 104 municipalities in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
James R. Palmer (left) took the helm at C-COR from 1958 to 1985, years of explosive growth in the cable industry. Palmer oversaw key changes in the C-COR agenda that helped keep it on the cutting edge of new developments. He divested the company of its cable operations to TCI in order to focus on the manufacture of cable equipment. In 1981 C-COR became a public company with stock listed on the NASDAQ. With a streamlined direction and more funding, C-COR emerged as a leading U.S. supplier of cable components with a strong reputation for fine quality, service and innovation.
The mid-1980s through the mid-1990s were turbulent times for cable TV with changes in government regulation of the industry. Richard E. Perry (right), C-COR's president and CEO from 1985 to 1998, brought to the job his experience as a highly regarded executive in the U.S. telecommunications industry. During his tenure the company modified its priorities again, concentrating on providing products and technical services for hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks. In the Perry era, C-COR expanded globally, opening offices in Canada and Europe, and increased its revenues from $20 million to $150 million. It introduced new HFC RF and fiber optic network products and was named by Forbes magazine as one of the top 200 companies in America.
Leading C-COR into the new millennium is David A. Woodle, CEO since 1998. Under Woodle's leadership, the company has repositioned itself with 14 acquisitions to tap into the growing market demand for expertise in deploying, managing, and supporting communications networks that offer the triple-play, on demand services of voice, video and data both over existing HFC cable and over tomorrow's IP-based networks. Today, C-COR provides a comprehensive portfolio of broadband access equipment, operations support system solutions, and high-end technical services for all phases of the network life cycle. The firm has a new theme as it marches toward the future: Meeting the demand of an on demand world. And, to think, it all began with TV antennas.
