SubscribeStoptheCap! reader Maribel wrote to inform us she got her point across about Time Warner’s unpopular usage cap “experiment” on Elmira’s WETM-TV news. The NBC affiliate in the southern tier of New York largely broadcasts to areas outside of the Rochester Road Runner system, but as you’ll see, some viewers in the northern part of their viewing area are affected, and they are angry and upset with Time Warner.
They should be. What starts in Rochester, Greensboro, Austin, San Antonio, and Beaumont will be coming to your Time Warner city soon enough. The time to stop the cap parade is right here, right now.
Starting today, StoptheCap! will rate the integrity and quality of the video news reports you see on this site. We feel it’s important to inform you when we think the reporter has gone beyond simply reciting a press release and accepting Time Warner’s assertions at face value. A “thumbs up” indicates a news report that provided fairness and balance, exposing viewers to multiple sides of an issue and/or a reporter willing to challenge the assertions made by those on camera. A “thumbs down” represents a report largely consisting of a rehash of company press releases, or a reporter who simply plants a microphone in front of a company spokesperson and allows them to ramble on, without any apparent hard questions or contrary viewpoints. You’ll quickly be able to identify which is which on your own soon enough.
Ughhhh. Great video, except for the piece at the end about TWC claiming that 85% of their customers would not be affected. 🙁
Realize its just a nightly news story, but need more specifics otherwise TWC will just keep quoting questionable statistics like the one above.
I think a good news report needs to contain both sides of view to be balanced. I don’t agree with TW’s assertion either, but it’s clearly impossible for a reporter to be able to dispute their numbers when Time Warner is unwilling to allow access to their raw data.
Besides, in the gallery of multimedia to come, you’re going to be see FAR WORSE, which is why I adopted the thumbs-up and down rating system. There are some reporters who simply turn into bobbleheads nodding and saying next to nothing when TW spinmeisters are rambling on and on….
You are right Phil, I sort of knee-jerked that one. 😉 On balance the TV news report is a good start, hopefully of more to come.
Will have to do some digging to find out what the actual total amount of data that would be needed to fully patch a Windows XP system, for example. I’m sure its easily at least 1 GB.
The thumbs up thumbs down system seems a good compromise. Will have to keep refining these arguments about why any form of data capping just doesn’t make sense.
I just did a Vista update and forgot how many MB’s it took. I know it wasn’t a 1gb but I think it was close to 500mb.
The 85% of customers won’t be affected line is BS because if this goes though EVERYONE will be effected. We will no longer be able to get on the internet each day and do what we need to do like we have been for years. We will have to check our “gas gauge” to see if were aloud to do what we need to do.
All depends on whats on your disk; if you’re pulling down serice packs et all youre going to go well into the 3GB range. I just built a system over the weekend; Vista x64 ISO, (from MS Technet subscription) +SP1: 3.7GB Fully patch up through the weekend: 1GB (+/-)35% Hardware updates (drivers etc…): ~600MB(+/-)20% AVG8.5 (free AntiViri) +all updates: ~400MB(+/-)20% Thats almost 6GB worth of data in 1 day, to get a base system up and running, (not including pulling down any other things such as flash/adobe +updates, Office ISO, any game/software updates…) So to build out a gaming PC… Read more »
Careful not to let StoptheCap! product placement in these reports sway the rating system.
I didn’t think we were actually mentioned at all in that report, were we?
Um, yeah. Three shots of StoptheCap! on the laptop.
Honestly, I never even saw it! 🙂 I was listening to the clip mostly while I uploaded a ton more to feed out in the coming days. Most of the time, we don’t get mentioned on TV news reports, but people have the power of The Google, and find their way here easily enough when they search for caps, or from fine folks who put our link in the message boards on those stations. Anyway, rest assured I won’t be taking placement into account. I promise you, there will be some stuff coming soon that will make your blood boil… Read more »
We need to alert the media in Greensboro, I haven’t heard anything here yet about this. The average consumer is unaware they are about to get bent over.
Greensboro has covered the story, just not as much or as often. It looks like WXII and WFMY are providing the only substantive coverage on television, though.
WGHP has only done a couple of reports and our newspaper has done a few more. Basically we are told that nothing can be done and not many of our government officials are willing to act upon it. The only council member that seems to care is our mayor. I’ve sent emails to the council and letters to the editor and so far no response.
It’s kinda sad.
Did they do any recently? If there are any video clips up, send me the URL and I’ll embed them here for everyone. I am working on Greensboro with increasing priority, if only because our two cities are now in the same boat, with caps coming sooner rather than later.
Here is a new article from today, Greensboro is going to have a protest
http://tinyurl.com/Greensboro-Protest
Article about the effect on local businesses
http://tinyurl.com/Effects-Businesses
The most recent story from WGHP
http://tinyurl.com/WGHP-story
I hope that helps Phil. If you need anymore info send me an email. I plan on going to the protest so I’ll send you the update on that
Phil and all, My wife, friends, and I have been following this issue for some time now. Thanks to you in particular Phil for starting the site. I wrote an email to WETM telling them about the situation and that I thought that our local community as well as TWC customers in general needed to know about this. Yes we mentioned stopthecap to the reporter as we use it as one of our primary means for information concerning this issue. We also mentioned it to Congressman Massa at his town hall forum last Saturday. I don’t think that it was… Read more »
I am from the immediate WETM viewing area and there are lots of people here in the Twin Tiers (Southern Tier NY, Northern Tier PA) who are upset about this Tiered pricing scheme. We’re part of Massa’s congressional district also so we’re in this fight together!
Up until January 1, 2009, TWC Rochester provided the Elmira broadcast stations to TWC cable subscribers in Yates County. Now they don’t.
So I had an unfavorable opinion of TWC Rochester before this Internet issue came to fore.
Maybe it was preemptive by TWC against Massa; deprive his constituents of a major source of information about him.