Cable TV exec never envisioned herself at helm

LINDA JANE MAAIA, right, took over Full Channel after her father died in 2004. Above, in her office at the  cable TV company, she works with Jane Cotter, left. /
LINDA JANE MAAIA, right, took over Full Channel after her father died in 2004. Above, in her office at the cable TV company, she works with Jane Cotter, left. /

This is the second in a series of 12 PBN articles focusing on the backgrounds, challenges and successes of some of the area’s most influential and interesting business women. The series began Sept. 12.

Linda Jane Maaia had already retired from a public-school teaching career and was in the midst of a second calling as a college professor when her father’s sudden death in 2004 launched her in an unexpected direction.

John Donofrio had owned the Full Channel Inc. cable TV company in Warren since it first flickered to life in 1983, providing service to Barrington, Warren and Bristol. It was his dream, his love. Even when other cable systems across the state sold out to Cox Communications, Donofrio held on.

So when he died of a heart attack, the family made the decision to keep the business in the family and chose Maaia, who had taught accounting at the college level and was a CPA, to step in.

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The former elementary school teacher was now suddenly running a cable TV company.

“In my father’s office, I found contracts ready to be signed and relationships ready to be solidified,” Maaia said last week, recalling when she took over. “I put all of that on the back burner until I could figure things out.”

Three years later, Maaia is still calling the shots as president and CEO of Full Channel, and she has big plans for the little cable company with 7,000 customers.

Last week, she talked of reviving her father’s plans to expand Full Channel’s service into East Providence, a longtime Cox territory, and providing improved digital phone service.

“These are things I had to put on the back burner until I was certain of the solid platform of the company,” she said.

Maaia describes herself as someone who has lots of interests, but she never really foresaw herself running her father’s cable company, or even holding a job there.

In the late 1970s, while teaching elementary school in East Providence, she earned an accounting degree and had hopes of teaching at the college level.

Maaia did that, after retiring from teaching in the early 1990s. She also became a CPA, earned a certificate of advanced graduate study in taxation, and performed consulting work.

It was all encouraged by her father.

“I think he always knew I’d be here at some point,” Maaia said. “And he wanted me to have that business background that I needed to have.”

While Maaia’s sister, Rosemary, worked at Full Channel in the business office, Maaia did not. That changed when John Donofrio died.

At a family meeting following his death in August 2004, Maaia said her mother, Hilda – who now chairs the board of Full Channel – insisted that it would have been her husband’s wish to see Maaia at the helm. Other family members agreed, because of her accounting background. “It did make sense,” Maaia said last week. “There was no one else in the family that could do that work.”

But there wasn’t much time for on-the-job training.

By 2004, the family-owned company and its 25 employees were fending off competition from Cox, the nation’s third-largest cable company, in the three towns where Full Channel had always had a monopoly.

Maaia had a lot of quick decisions to make, but she had help. Her husband, William, had served as Full Channel’s lawyer since its inception, so he knew the company history. The Maaias’ son, Levi, came on board with a strong understanding of cable TV technologies. He was named director of new media.

The first decision was to put her father’s move into East Providence on hold.

Instead, Full Channel was reorganized and some of the staff changed. “The company was geared to operate in a monopoly,” Maaia said. “So we had to think, how do we reorganize the company in order to compete in a competitive environment as opposed to the monopoly?”

“My father hadn’t spent a lot of time with that,” she added, “because he was looking towards the move into East Providence.”

Maaia hired a new finance director, engineering director and a new general manager. Initially, she wasn’t totally confident of the changes she was making to her father’s creation.

“I don’t think you ever know for certain whether you’re doing the right thing or not,” she said. “It’s been a real challenge to put in people who are the real experts. I feel really good about it now. We have people in place that are working together as a smart team.”

To better compete, the company also improved its network operations center and increased its redundancies for Internet service, moves designed to reduce the number of service interruptions.

It’s one of few areas in the country where two cable TV companies are competing head-to-head, but Full Channel is doing just fine, Maaia said. Although the company didn’t disclose revenue figures, she said the customer count is steady at about 7,000.

And in the David-and-Goliath matchup, Maaia isn’t averse to slinging a few stones. She noted that even after Full Channel’s rate increase earlier this month – the first in more than four years – its basic cable rates are still lower than the competition’s. “And we offer more channels,” she added.

In addition, Full Channel is now ready to pick up where John Donofrio left off. Maaia said the company is in the process of reapplying with state regulators for permission to extend its services into East Providence.

The move would give Full Channel access to another 22,000 households, roughly the same number of homes in Barrington, Warren and Bristol.

The potential growth excites Maaia, who is an East Providence resident. “The move is going to double the size of this company, so for me, I feel like we’re going somewhere big,” she said. •

Read about other Business Women, in the rest of the PBN series, here.

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