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WROC Rochester Covers Time Warner’s Pricing Change Plan

Phillip Dampier April 19, 2009 Time Warner Cable, Video No Comments

[Editor's Note: The fast-changing news on the Time Warner metered usage plan and its temporary demise did not allow sufficient time to present a full history of media coverage of this issue across all of the affected areas. For historical documentation, and in case of any potential resumption of this type of plan, I feel it is important to have this material archived here for future reference. Some of the information in this news report may no longer be applicable.]

Time Warner’s metered billing plan for broadband Internet was one of the hottest stories this year in Rochester, resulting in overwhelming numbers of comments and calls to station newsrooms and websites. For this reason, it remained a hot topic day after day, and got expanded attention.

WROC had a quick report on Time Warner’s change of the original plan to increase usage allowances, but also allowed the company to state, unchallenged, the “exaflood theory,” that claims the Internet will somehow run out of bandwidth as early as 2012, a notion debunked several years ago when it turned out the study promulgating that theory was paid by an interested party (AT&T) in coming to that conclusion.

This story gets a neutral rating. There is certainly not much to see here. This was an unpackaged story, with significant time limitations, so that does need to be considered. The story relied almost entirely on the Time Warner press release, which also let the company get their “exaflood” theory back on the news without challenge. Had this been the only report from the station during this news cycle, it would have gotten a thumbs-down for being a “drive by” effort. But WROC devoted considerable additional coverage, with a full package, in another newscast that day.

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