Growing up in rural North Dakota, Decker Anstrom was more interested in baseball than in television. In fact, his family didn’t even get its first TV set until Mr. Anstrom went away to college.
A graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and the Woodrow Wilson Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Mr. Anstrom took his first Washington job as a staffer at the Office of Management and Budget during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.
A relative newcomer to cable, Mr. Anstrom joined the National Cable Television Association as executive vice president in 1987. He ascended to the group’s presidency seven years later when his predecessor, Jim Mooney, resigned.
Soft-spoken yet effective, Mr. Anstrom shepherded the cable industry through some turbulent years, accented by fallout from a government-mandated rate rollback in 1994, the incursion of direct-to-home satellite, industry consolidation, the meddling of telephone companies and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
By 1999, Mr. Anstrom had had enough of Washington but wasn’t ready to leave the cable business. In August of that year, he left NCTA, moved to Atlanta and became president of The Weather Channel. Today, Mr. Anstrom is president and chief operating officer of TWC parent Landmark Communications.