Rutlidge: One for us, none for you

Cablevision is upset paying for networks it doesn’t want, need, or desire to carry.  But broadcasters are demanding that the cable company pick up lesser-known, unwanted cable networks in return for the stations Cablevision craves.  Sound familiar?  It’s a variation on consumer cable a-la-carte: picking and paying only for the channels and networks you want.  It’s a concept Cablevision wants for themselves, but continues to deny to their customers.

Last week the cable company filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission proposing a ban on “channel bundling” by broadcasters as part of an effort to reform retransmission consent laws.  Cablevision argues they are forced to carry unwanted networks as a result of current agreements.  No agreement, no local stations on the cable dial.

Cablevision chiefly cites major broadcast network owners for pushing these bundled agreements.  The company’s suburban New York City cable system has to reach accommodations with local New York stations that are all owned and operated by the major American networks.  That’s why an agreement to renew WNBC-TV might include the required carriage of a hardly-known network like Sleuth, owned by the same company that owns WNBC: NBCUniversal.  In return for an extension of WABC-TV’s retransmission consent agreement, Cablevision might be asked to carry all of Disney’s lesser-known cable networks.  Disney owns ABC and WABC.

Ironically, the same cable company that refuses to allow a-la-carte themselves is selling their proposal as a boon to consumers:

Cablevision chief operating officer Tom Rutledge says the proposal will “protect consumers from the threat of broadcaster blackouts.” He adds, “consumers are the ones who are harmed when broadcasters pull or threaten to pull their networks from cable systems.”

Cablevision also wants broadcasters to publicly disclose the true asking price for their channels.  Cablevision itself will not disclose its wholesale programming costs for cable networks.

“Broadcasters should not be able to keep the prices they charge hidden or to discriminate between distributors in a given market,” Rutledge said. “Our simple reforms would end these practices.”

They would for broadcasters, but not for the cable company or consumers.

A Radio Shack store in Hamilton, Montana has come up with a novel way to pitch satellite dishes to local residents — include a free gun with every purchase.

Actually, it’s not a promotion sanctioned by Radio Shack, and DISH Network has nothing to say about the promotion either.  It was the idea of store owner Steve Strand, who runs S&S Electronics, authorized to do business under the Radio Shack brand.

Strand says new DISH customers get their choice of either a Hi-Point 380c-p pistol or a Baikal MP-18 20 GA shotgun.  If guns are not your thing, Strand will give you a $50 gift card for the local Pizza Hut instead.

Strand’s store serves Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley — regions that are served by Bresnan Cable, now owned by Cablevision.  Stories about Bresnan on Stop the Cap! always elicit plenty of response… about how darn lousy the service is.  So satellite television, especially outside of Bresnan’s service area, is the only real option for many residents.

Giving away a gun with every purchase may raise eyebrows among many, but for most Montanans, it’s no big deal.  And when you call, S&S tells visitors to their promotional website there is never a need to press “1” for English.  “We are American and we speak English,” boasts the site.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Guns in Country 3-30-11.flv[/flv]

CNN interviewed store owner Bill Strand about his unique promotion — a free gun with every satellite TV purchase.  (3 minutes)

NY City Council members are reviewing an application by Time Warner Cable and Cablevision to offer Wi-Fi services in 32 New York-area parks… for a fee that could bring the companies as much as $10 million dollars a year in new revenue.

The controversial proposal would frustrate efforts by the nonprofit group NYCWireless to find free Wi-Fi providers to deliver service in New York’s public parks.

In September, the city of New York renewed franchises for both Cablevision and Time Warner Cable that included a commitment to spend $10 million to install Wi-Fi service in area parks.  But nobody said the companies had to provide the service for free.

Instead, users will only get free samples — up to three ten-minute sessions per month.  Additional time on the network will cost 99 cents per day.  Cable customers will get unlimited access for free.

Dana Spiegel, executive director of the nonprofit NYCWireless, says handing over the wireless space in public parks to private fee-based providers is “absolutely unconscionable.”

City council members don’t have a final say over the deal — a state commission does — but intends to investigate the deal and its fairness to New York residents.

Verizon FiOS has a growing presence in New York City, and those customers would be locked out of free Wi-Fi access on the proposed park network.

NYCWireless offered the council several reasons why relying on cable companies to deliver public park Wi-Fi was not a great deal:

First, the plan does not establish any form of “Free Public Wi-Fi”, an amenity of New York City parks since NYCwireless began our work, and one replicated by the Parks Department and many other organizations around the City. Free Public Wi-Fi Hotspots were a very significant recommendation of the Diamond Consulting “Broadband Needs Assessment Study,” and the “Free” part of these public hotspots are exactly the part of these amenities that make them so valuable and essential for local residents.

Make no mistake: DoITT’s plan establishes a $1 per day fee for internet service in parks. There may be a few free 10-minute blocks per month, and there may be ways to hide the $1 per day charge in a resident’s cable service internet bill, but with DoITT’s plan, NYC won’t have Free Wi-Fi. We’ll have $1 per day Wi-Fi, delivered to public spaces that are maintained by our tax dollars, paid to a couple of huge private corporations.

In fact, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable stand to make tens of millions of dollars per year providing this service. Central Park gets about 25m visitors per year, and if we ignore all other parks, and figure that fewer than half of those visitors buy one day of internet service per year, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision get paid $0.99 x 10 million visitors = $10,000,000.

Second, the industry standard for gaining access to such types of subscription service as are contemplated by DoITT and the cable companies requires that a prospective user of a fee-based Parks Hotspot will need to create an account and enter their billing information. This requires the submission of identity, address, and credit card information into a web form prior to gaining access to the hotspot. Essentially, by promoting this solution, DoITT is pushing NYC citizens and visitors to hand over deeply personal and secure information to a private organization over which neither the user nor DoITT has any control.

Contrast this to the way that NYCwireless offers free Wi-Fi to citizens: we do require registration of a user account so that we can track agreement to our Acceptable Usage Policy. However we require only a valid email address. No billing address, no credit card, no other identity information.

Personally, I am fearful of handing over such information to such private organizations, though I have in the past. But I am more fearful for the harm that will be done to those that depend more significantly upon Park Hotspots. How many city residents don’t have a credit card? How many children in playgrounds who couldn’t get a credit card even if they wanted to? Adults? How many city residents live in neighborhoods that are otherwise safe, but in which they would prefer not pulling out their wallet and a credit card just to get what should be Free Internet Access? How many city residents depend upon Free Wi-Fi because they live below the poverty line, and because they can’t afford or don’t want cable internet, cannot afford the $5 it would cost them to get internet access in a city park during the week?

Lastly, because of DoITT’s “whole package solution”, most NYC residents and visitors won’t see any Wi-Fi, for free or for fee, for years, since local organizations that would otherwise have sponsored the creation of a Free Public Wi-Fi Hotspot say “oh, well, the city is going to do this someday, so we won’t bother doing this now for our community.” If past experience is any predictor of future performance, it will be years before the first Paid Wi-Fi Hotspot is opened, and many more before many others are opened, if at all. Meanwhile, DoITT’s actions will have stopped in its tracks any plans for more hotspots that local organizations may be contemplating.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NY 1 Time Warner Cable Offers Free WiFi Hotspots For City Customers 3-26-10.flv[/flv]

NY1 reported on Time Warner Cable’s expanded Wi-Fi hotspots in New York in this story from last March.  (1 minute)

An upset borough president

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is calling on New York City’s telecommunications workers to be pressed into service to cope with the snow emergency created by a weekend blizzard that left more than two feet of snow in parts of New York and New Jersey.

Markowitz told WABC-TV news the mayor’s response to the storm was a “royal screw-up” and he’s angry Manhattan streets are bare while outer boroughs like his contend with roads that have not seen a plow since the storm began.

“Verizon, Cablevision, Time Warner — we need men and women that are healthy and able-bodied,” Markowitz appealed on air.  “Twelve bucks an hour — that’s a lot of money — up to fifteen bucks an hour, to be able to help our Sanitation Department clean out streets.”

“We need every available vehicle you’ve got to help clean this place up,” said Markowitz. “I want as to look as good as Broadway in Manhattan — clean it like Broadway in Manhattan, no more and no less.”

These Verizon trucks won't be of much help, stuck in an intersection in Queens.

Much of the city remains under difficult driving conditions because of abandoned vehicles left in the middle of streets and a lack of plowing.  Disruptions to electric, phone and cable service have been reported because of accidents, damage done by snow removal vehicles, and moisture-related equipment failures.

Pressing companies like Verizon and Time Warner into service may not provide much assistance, considering vehicles belonging to both companies were themselves stuck in many locations around the city.

For residents upstate, already dealing with record-breaking snowfalls in December, the chaos downstate is mystifying.  Residents in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse have another word for the holiday blizzard: Sunday.

The three cities continue their annual competition for the Golden Snowball Award for the upstate community left with the most white stuff:

Golden Snowball Totals for the 2010 – 2011 Snowfall Season
Updated  12/27/2010

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WABC New York City Copes With Storm Aftereffects 12-28-10.flv[/flv]

WABC-TV provides the views of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, as well as a roundup of the lightning-hot anger being felt by an increasing number of New Yorkers stuck at home because of unplowed streets. (17 minutes)

The cable company best known for serving suburban New York City has gone west with the purchase of Bresnan Communications

The new owner of Bresnan Communications is promising customers in Montana and Wyoming an end to anemic broadband service, but subscribers wonder who is going to pay for it.

Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision is telling subscribers upgrades are on the way to bring faster broadband, better cable and phone service to 300,000 Mountain West customers formerly served by Bresnan.

John Bickham, president of Cable & Communications for Cablevision, told readers of the Billings Gazette improvements would arrive over the next year-and-a-half:

We’re going to start by increasing the number of high-definition channels we provide, with a goal of providing more than 100 free HD channels over the next 18 months. We will also be adding more movie choices and more free video-on-demand titles, including prime-time shows from leading broadcast networks.

High-speed Internet service in the towns we serve is going to get faster. Over the next 18 months, we will upgrade the speeds of our basic level of Internet service to up to 15 megabits per second, nearly double what they are today. And with our award-winning and top-rated phone service, we will be adding even more features, functions and value to the phone service available in these communities today, including access to an innovative Web site to manage account preferences, review calling records or check voice mail from any computer.

For many subscribers, the improvements cannot come soon enough.

One reader in Jackson Hole, Wyo., said Bresnan rarely provided broadband service at the advertised rates, noting their 8Mbps service really was closer to 3-4Mbps.

But residents in both Wyoming and Montana warn that if Cablevision plans to manage all of the spiffy upgrades with a rate increase, they’ll cancel.

“I’ll be watching my bill. If it goes up because of all these changes, I’ll drop you in a heartbeat,” wrote one Montana customer.