Stephenson

With a 2011 failed T-Mobile merger well behind him, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson did well for himself in 2012, walking home with $21 million in compensation.

AT&T customers did less well, facing the imminent termination of AT&T Plus, a customer loyalty rewards program trialed in three states that offered customers waived upgrade and activation fees, gift cards, and 25% off cell phone accessories.

AT&T Mobility’s chief financial officer Pet Ritcher said that customers shifting into its Mobile Share data plans would do a better job of keeping customers in place.

Despite the fact Stephenson’s failure to secure the T-Mobile merger cost the company a $4.2 billion deal termination penalty payable in cash and wireless spectrum, his personal compensation only took a $2.1 million hit in 2011. All was forgiven in 2012, when his compensation hit a new record, up from the $20.2 million earned in 2010 — a four percent pay hike earned in an era of stagnant or declining wages for the middle and working classes.

The breakdown:

• Stephenson’s base salary of $1.55 million was enhanced with a $6.06 million bonus and $12.6 million in additional AT&T shares;
• Stephenson’s personal use of AT&T’s corporate jets cost the company $276,391;
• AT&T paid for Stephenson’s home security as a cost of $101,923;
• Miscellaneous compensation amounted to $803,308.

AT&T’s earnings amounted to $7.3 billion in 2012, up 84 percent from $3.9 billion earned the year before. Revenue increased to $127.4 billion.

AT&T paid no federal taxes in 2011. In fact, the company won a taxpayer-subsidized refund of $420 million.

Wireless plan changes, workforce reductions, rate increases, and other “cost savings” also all helped the company.

More than 18,000 Time Warner Cable customers in upstate New York will receive average refunds of $119 each from the cable company that overcharged them for service since 2007.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a settlement with Time Warner Cable after a two-year investigation found that the company overcharged former Cablevision subscribers in 10 Upstate towns and villages. The settlement requires Time Warner Cable to pay $2.2 million in refunds to 18,437 customers and stop charging subscribers’ fees that exceed the amounts permitted under their municipalities’ Franchise Agreements. As part of the agreement, Time Warner Cable also agreed to pay$200,000 in fees and costs to the State of New York.

The settlement requires Time Warner Cable to refund overcharges collected since March 2007, with interest, to current subscribers in the Towns of Glenville, Livonia, Stafford, Oakfield, Geneva, Thompson, Lima, Batavia and the Villages of Waterloo and Ellenville.

Former customers and those that have moved away from these communities seem to be out of luck.

Schneiderman

“For too long, Time Warner Cable has been overcharging fees to its customers in direct violation of their local franchise contracts. This agreement brings millions of dollars in refunds to upstate consumers who overpaid their bills,” said Schneiderman. “Many New York families operate on a tight budget and every dollar counts. My office will not tolerate cable companies that ignore their contractual obligations and overcharge New York subscribers.”

Time Warner Cable’s billing practices were brought to the Attorney General’s attention by the Town of Glenville in January 2011. The Attorney General began a two year investigation which found that Time Warner Cable had in fact been overcharging Glenville residents for many years, and that Time Warner Cable had been improperly charging consumers in other Upstate communities with Franchise Agreements that Time Warner Cable had acquired from Cablevision Industries in 1995. Although Time Warner Cable stopped overcharging franchise fees to consumers and voluntarily made $1.4 million in refunds to subscribers in eight towns in 2007 and 2010, it continued to overcharge consumers in the ten towns and villages covered by this agreement.

A Franchise Agreement is a contract that local governments negotiate with cable companies granting the right to offer services and use public facilities. Some of the Franchise Agreements at issue limited the fee Time Warner Cable paid the town to 3% of gross revenues, and prohibited the cable company from billing subscribers any part of this cost. Other Franchise Agreements required Time Warner Cable to pay a 5% franchise fee and permitted Time Warner Cable to pass-through two-fifths of this fee to subscribers.  The municipalities also had the option to voluntarily allocate two-fifths of the fee to a fund subsidizing the cost of expanding the cable network in their communities, in which case none of the fee was permitted to be passed-through to consumers. The Attorney General’s investigation found that Time Warner Cable violated both types of Franchise Fee restrictions.

As a result of the settlement, Time Warner customers will receive credits on their bill within 90 days, with the amount proportional to their monthly subscription charges. Individual overcharges vary by customer and town, but average $119 with accumulated interest. As part of the Attorney General’s investigation, Time Warner Cable reviewed its records of all its New York Franchise Agreements purchased from Cablevision and identified no other towns where similar overcharges had taken place during the period from 2007 to 2013.

The Oscars viewing party in Shreveport nearly never happened late last month when Comcast dropped the ball and left a “Technical Difficulties” message on subscribers’ screens for several hours. An enterprising technician at a local TV station saved the day when he found old-fashioned rabbit ears and a digital tuner in the back of his truck and was able to get the local ABC affiliate’s over-the-air signal on the big screens at the Robinson Film Center.

The technical foul-up was just the latest embarrassment for Comcast, not only because the outage impacted subscribers across a 75-mile radius, but also because Shreveport has a thriving partnership with the film industry. It also may be the breaking point for city officials tired of hearing complaints Comcast refuses to fix themselves.

Comcast blamed the latest widespread outage on a power problem.

“Comcast experienced a commercial power outage Sunday night,” said Frances Smith, a representative from Comcast’s government and regulatory affairs. “We are investigating and indications are that a resulting power surge damaged the switch that transfers the headend operation to a generator. We restored the majority of service within two hours and deeply regret the inconvenience to our customers.”

No refunds or service credits for customers are planned, unless those affected specifically ask for them within 30 days of the outage.

Comcast’s 15-year franchise with the city of Shreveport expired at the end of 2012 and the company is not making any friends on the Shreveport City Council as renewal discussions plod on while complaints from subscribers continue to pour in.

Most of the problems with Comcast service in Louisiana’s third largest city relate to the length of service outages, unresponsive customer service, and the quality of cable TV reception.

Webb

Comcast officials promised upgrades six years ago to address reliability issues, but city councilman Ron Webb says he hasn’t seen them and Comcast never delivered.

“We’re not trying to run them out of town,” Webb told KTRE-TV. “I want them to provide a good service. I have everything that I own bundled with them, and I’m paying dearly for it. But I’m happy to have the service. But I just want to see those improvements. I have the same problems.”

City officials are expecting Comcast officials to appear before the city council this evening to explain themselves and report on what plans they have to fix ongoing service complaints.

As it stands, Comcast continues to operate in Shreveport on a month-to-month basis until either a new franchise agreement is signed or another cable company responds to the city’s invitations to apply for a franchise. To date, no cable company has been willing to challenge Comcast’s presence in the city. In fact, Dale Sibley, the city’s chief administrative officer told the Shreveport Times no company even responded to their requests.

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Comcast’s problems have been ongoing in Shreveport for years. Last September, KTBS hinted that the city was considering replacing Comcast with a different cable operator. But as other cities have already learned, no major cable operator is willing to challenge another. (Sept. 19, 2012) (3 minutes)

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The night of the Academy Awards was a low-key affair in Shreveport after Comcast went out of service across the city for at least two hours, leading to questions from city officials. KTBS in Shreveport rescued at least some viewers attending a downtown reception when a station technician hooked up an antenna and picked up the station’s broadcast signal. (3 minutes)

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At least 24 hours after Comcast’s February outage, some subscribers were still without cable service, despite claims from the cable company the outage only lasted two hours. KMSS in Shreveport reports.  (1 minute)

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KSLA in Shreveport says Comcast’s ongoing service problems are being heard by members of the city council. Now some say the company never followed through on service improvements promised six years earlier.  (2 minutes)

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The Shreveport Times talks about tonight’s city council meeting which is scheduled to discuss Comcast’s service problems, the company’s franchise renewal, and obstacles that prevent another provider from taking over and delivering better service.  (3 minutes)

Windstream Communications is under investigation by the Governor’s Office of Consumer Protection because of allegations the company is advertising broadband speeds and performance the company simply cannot deliver its customers in Georgia.

A Windstream employee in a company retail office in Dawsonville told an undercover CBS Atlanta photographer that the company can offer Internet speeds up to 24Mbps. He guaranteed service no slower than 6 to 12Mbps. But Mark Creekmore, who lives in Dawsonville, reports his speeds sometimes barely reach 1Mbps during the afternoons.

Duane Hartness, a Windstream customer, says Windstream has oversubscribed their service by continuing to sell broadband on a network that is overcrowded as-is, which slows speeds for every customer.

“Every customer they add to their oversubscribed DSLAM increases their revenue while further degrading your bandwidth,” Hartness said. “Lacking competition, they can ignore any and all complaints.”

Creekmore wants every Windstream customer in Georgia that is dissatisfied with their broadband service to file complaints with the state agency.

“The more complaints, the more likely the Office of Consumer Protection is to take action,” Creekmore said. “Please make sure to include that you are not getting what you are paying for and any other personal detail that would help them understand what you have gone through. If you have had multiple communications with Windstream, please include those details as well. In short, the more detail the better.”

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WGCL — CBS Atlanta reports there are new developments in Georgia regarding Windstream: It is under investigation by the governor’s office for misleading subscribers with broadband speeds the company cannot actually deliver.  (3 minutes)

The FCC finds Windstream is the worst of the worst among DSL providers, only giving customers advertised speeds 81 percent of the time. AT&T, Georgia’s largest phone company, doesn’t do much better.

Windstream is the worst-performing DSL provider in the country according to the Federal Communications Commission, with just 81 percent of customers getting the broadband speeds marketed.

After complaints about the company helped derail H.B. 282 — a bill Windstream heavily lobbied for that would have eliminated possible competition from community-owned providers — Windstream representatives quickly began promising upgrades.

“We’re asking our customers to be patient with us because we’re on it. We understand that they have issues and we’re working to upgrade their network,” Bettye Willis, a regional vice president at Windstream, told the CBS station in Atlanta.

Willis added Windstream was committed to solving its Internet speed problems, but not for everyone.

The company released this map showing planned service upgrades for “two-thirds of the communities it serves” in Georgia. But the company warned not everyone would receive improved service. For the remaining one-third, “take it or leave it” broadband service will continue.

Cable, satellite, and telco-TV subscribers face paying an extra $12 a year for two new sports channels that are certain to be added to the lineup by this summer.

Rupert Murdoch’s dream is to launch a cable sports network that can successfully rival ESPN. That dream begins to come true in August when News Corporation launches FOX Sports 1, a makeover of the Speed Channel that will cost subscribers more. Soon after, the Fuel Channel will relaunch as FOX Sports 2, a companion network.

The networks will carry programming acquired from deals with a range of sports leagues. FOX Sports 1 will feature Major League Baseball games starting next year. For the late summer and early fall of this year, the new sports channels will be packed with the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (and truck races), pro archery which implies that new bowstring, UFC matches, and a range of college football and basketball games.

While the initial price of the new sports networks is relatively cheap at $1 a month per subscriber, in contrast with ESPN’s $5.15 monthly asking price, Murdoch and other Fox executives hope to one day rival ESPN, which guarantees bidding wars for sports programming that will escalate cable programming costs and subscriber bills.

Chase Carey, president of Fox, acknowledged the cost to acquire rights for sports programming have increased, but he believes sports programming will continue to be a priority for subscribers willing to tolerate higher bills for premier sporting events that may be featured on platforms such as the WSM Casino.

“We think sports is a huge arena that has room in it to build a really attractive businesses,” Carey told analysts on an earnings call last month.

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Lee Berke, president of LHB Sports Entertainment Media, talks about News Corp.’s plan to start a national sports network to debut in August. Fox Sports 1 will be available to more than 90 million pay-TV homes, New York-based News Corp. said yesterday in a statement. He speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” (4 minutes)

FOX SPORTS 1 PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS

COLLEGE BASKETBALL – Dozens of exclusive prime time games on Monday and Thursday nights, plus Saturday and Sunday coverage of the Big 12, Pac-12 and Conference USA.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL – Led by Notre Dame at Stanford, the Big Ten Championship Game and Pac-12 Championship Game (2014) on FOX, dozens of exclusive, live games from the Pac-12, Big 12 and Conference USA on Thursday nights and Saturdays; triple- and quadruple-headers on Saturdays; Saturday pre- and postgame coverage.

MLB – Beginning in 2014, select League Championship Series and Division Series games; regular-season games over 26 Saturdays; live game-in-progress look-in show.

NASCAR – Select NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races as soon as 2015; NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races; NASCAR Sprint All-Star race; all SpeedWeeks events leading up to the Daytona 500 including: Daytona 500 Qualifying, Sprint Unlimited at Daytona (2014, 2017-22) and the Budweiser Duel, now in prime time; NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NCWTS Practice and Qualifying sessions; NASCAR RaceDay, providing pre- and post-race coverage; NASCAR Victory Lane, a weekly wrap-up show; and Race Hub, a daily mid-day studio show with the latest from drivers, owners and garages.

SOCCER – Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday afternoon coverage of the world’s most prolific club soccer competitions, the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, and CONCACAF Champions League featuring many of the world’s greatest and most successful clubs; the world’s oldest soccer competition, the FA Cup; CONCACAF Gold Cup; CONCACAF Qualifiers, FIFA Women’s World Cup coverage in 2015 and 2019; FIFA Men’s World Cup coverage in 2018 and 2022; delayed matches in prime time; weekly magazine and highlights shows.

UFC – Featured on Wednesday nights; live FIGHT NIGHTS through 2014, the first is scheduled for launch night, Saturday, Aug. 17; FOX event preliminary cards; UFC Tonight, the weekly authority for UFC news and information; 14 Saturday pay-per-view preliminary cards; hundreds of hours of library programs and events.