News and Reviews....
CABLE BIZ November 2007
By Bob Lieto
Over the years I have heard from many of my customers about what they feel is an over charging by Cable operators. Some of my customers have reverted to a small dish, either by DIRECT TV or DISH Network. The main problem though, has not gone away or changed for the better. Cable is charging a lot for what they provide and many of us are being caught without an alternative. The customers that live in apartments have no option at all in many instances.
I was educated in the fine art of Cable-ese a year ago when I ask my cable company to lower my service to a basic from an enhanced service at my office. I did not know that commercial customers were treated with a different set of rules from residential but soon learned the facts. It seems that commercial customers have no choice. They cannot just take the basic $10 - $12 local channels 2-14 but are required to take the whole enchilada, and at a premium costs well above the same service of a residential customer. I felt this was abuse of the system. I started to write, what I though were the people in charge. My stand was that, although I did not want the enhanced channel lineup, it was forced upon me and beyond that, I was paying tax on the greater amount of cost of which I had no control. Take it or Leave it should be the Cable Motto. I wrote the cable company, the cable advisory board in my area and the Attorney General and laid out my gripe. No Choice, and pay greater taxes. I explained that the state was upholding a rule and supporting it unjustly.
To my surprise I received an answer from our Attorney General. He stated that I had a legitimate complaint, but the state had NO jurisdiction on the cable companies for the Federal government was the authoritative rule. I stood back a moment to consider the facts. Fed Rule, State taxed, NO CHOICE. And above all a little piece of paper that the cable companies include with their BILL, that states if you have a gripe, contact your local cable council. Was I missing something? The balance of the rule in my case has never been corrected. I choose to write BULLS__T on that little piece of paper and mailed it back with my monthly check.
This brings me to the center of my news blip. This week the Federal Government (FCC) tried to expand their control over cable programming, but faced intense pressure from industry lobbyists and like-minded lawmakers. The just is that a recent report promoted by chairman Kevin Martin, found that cable TV reaches a wide enough U.S. audience to trigger a rule within the 1984 telecommunication law that would give the government significant new powers to ensure program diversity. The cable industry disputes the data underlying the report, which the FCC was scheduled to vote on Tuesday November 27, though they (the Cable companies) have refused to make their subscriber data public. Martin told reporters that commissioners were discussing the possibility of forcing cable operators such as Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., to provide subscriber data so it could be included in a revised version of the report for the commission to vote on. The cable subscriber threshold is known as the 70/70 rule, whereby 70 percent of the U.S. households have access to cable and 70 percent of those households subscribe. If granted, further authority, by triggering the 70/70 rule could push through other proposals disliked by the cable industry, including a so-called a la carte service model that would allow subscribers to pick and choose channels they want rather accepting bundled packages from cable companies.
Federal regulators decided on November 27, 2007 to also postpone voting on a proposal that, if approved, would have required broadcasters to lease excess channels to small businesses owned by women and minorities. The excess channels would have been available following the nation's digital transition in early 2009.
Comment ..... I feel that something is going to shift in the coming year. With the Digital Conversion about 14 months away and the overall negative feedback I hear on channel programming and lack of choice, there needs to be change within the cable industry. And a subscriber whether Residential or Commercial should be under the same set of programming cost rules. The rules concerning Commercial accounts were put in place when the cost of running a cable to a commercial account was a greater cost due to the limited fan out and not a returned income in numbers, as when the cable feed is run in a residential area. Cable is everywhere now and everyone should be treated equally in the service of their product.
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Past Articles on Subject:
Digital Cable, See It Now or Not May 2007
