News 14 Carolina or Soviet TV News Circa 1977 - You Decide

Rarely do you encounter a news clip that is so overwhelmingly biased, one-sided, and utterly stunning in its conflict of interest as the one that follows from News 14 Carolina, which resembles a report straight out of Soviet TV’s Vremya newscast, circa 1977.

This “report” consists of a Time Warner-owned newscast anchor reciting Time Warner talking points, and then follows up by interviewing the director of media relations for Time Warner.  No challenges, no follow-ups, just that pasted on smile and bobblehead nod.  Don’t break a sweat with all of that hard reporting there, and I wouldn’t hang around waiting for the Edward R. Murrow Award anytime soon.  At the very end, as a casual aside, viewers are informed the entire report was one giant corporate family affair.

The Greensboro market -is- savvy.  More savvy than Time Warner thought, anyway.  They said no to caps and gas gauges.

But one last question to viewers down there. If you’re getting news from this operation, why?

Are you kidding me?  Time Warner should have paid standard commercial rates for this.  If a reporter or anchor is really not serious about presenting a balanced report or newscast, don’t do one.  This is why people get cynical about broadcast journalism.  An obviously clueless anchor, the very definition of “conflict of interest” reporting, and a blasé disclaimer coming at the end, results in a journalistic train wreck.  The only reason I didn’t put a whole row of thumbs-down here is the possibility that perhaps someone had a gun trained on her under the desk.  Good night and good luck!

Verizon Selling Internet-Phone-TV Package in FiOS Areas for $95 a Month

One of the reasons StoptheCap! always believed Time Warner chose the cities it did for its cap experiment was to steer clear of Verizon, particularly where the company offers its fiber optic service to homes.  Verizon FiOS does not cap Internet usage and has made that well known.

The blowback from Time Warner’s experimental caps wasn’t just limited to the cities “lucky” enough to be chosen.  The story went national, and now competitors are moving in to take advantage of Time Warner’s public relations catastrophe and poach their customers.

Verizon is now offering customers in FiOS territories a bundle of services that are priced well below what Time Warner is charging people in nearby cities where FiOS isn’t.  For $94.99 a month for the first year ($99.99 a month for the second), they are bundling an unlimited digital phone service, a basic cable package with up to 295 channels and a dozen HD channels, and broadband service at 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up!  Oh, and they’ll also give you a $150 rebate in the form of a debit card.  I pay $170 a month to Time Warner in Rochester and don’t even get their digital phone product, and standard Internet service here is 10Mbps down and a silly 384Kbps up.  Ahhh… competition.

And Verizon will, for $10 more, give you 20Mbps down and 5Mbps up, as well as 350 channels, more than 50 in HD.  I have to pay $10 more here and that only gives me “Turbo” Road Runner offering 15Mbps down and 1Mbps up (plus the Powerboost gimmick).  That’s it.

Verizon High Speed Internet DSL Service For $18 A Month

Now you see why Time Warner doesn’t dare try their cap experiment in a community where FiOS is available.  Why would anyone stay a customer?  Heck, even if you wanted to stay with Time Warner for phone and television service, you can buy faster broadband from Verizon on their 10/2 tier for $45 a month, and no caps.

Verizon also gets to target communities where FiOS isn’t yet available, but Time Warner’s threatened caps were, with a guaranteed two year contract-fixed price for DSL comparable to Road Runner Lite for $18 a month. Or they’ll sell their highest DSL tier (7.1Mbps down/768kbps up) for $38 a month and no modem rental fee. No caps there either.

Frontier continues to enjoy smacking Time Warner around for its duplicitous “caps are about you saving money” campaign.  In the Sunday Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, they took another shot at Time Warner’s CEO Glenn Britt for accusing customers of “misunderstanding” their plan, where they try and convince customers that emptying their wallets and handing more money over to Time Warner is somehow a good thing.

Thanks to StoptheCap! reader Bob for sending along the Frontier ad.  Now, if Frontier had not lost the first self-install kit they sent our way (and are supposedly re-shipping express mail to arrive here today), we could have been hooked up by now.

During the usage cap controversy, public officials in the Triad of North Carolina had their hands tied because competitive alternatives for the area just couldn’t provide an equivalent level of service.  Greensboro mayor Yvonne Johnson sought out other cable companies to potentially wire her city.  Unfortunately, cable operators have traditionally maintained their informal agreement to not overbuild, or compete in cities where another operator already provides service.

[This story appeared before last week’s announcement that Time Warner had temporarily shelved the usage caps in these communities.]

Time Warner Alex, bless his heart.  He’s back with another revelation for all of the cities that successfully drove back the usage caps, at least for now.  Since we’re unwilling to play in his metered sandbox, he’s taking all of the toys home with him.  It seems that because Rochester, Austin, San Antonio, and the Triad said “no thanks” to Time Warner’s Tiers, the company may be rethinking deploying DOCSIS 3 upgrades in these markets.

“It was scheduled as part of consumption based billing trial, but we all know how you feel about that,” he Tweeted.  It’s good to know that he knows.

Evidently, unless customers are willing to be force-fed paltry and overpriced tiers, Time Warner doesn’t see the point in keeping up with the rest of the country’s cable broadband providers who are upgrading systems to DOCSIS 3.

No matter that the upgrades will likely help Time Warner as much as its customers.  Given the choice between mega-fast tiers that blow through usage caps in a matter of hours vs. unlimited access at speeds that are perfectly fine for the majority of broadband applications, customers have overwhelmingly made their choice – we’ll take what we have now.

Nobody objects if Time Warner wants to rake in more cash by deploying their upgrades and selling access to premium speed tiers at higher prices, as long as those tiers are unlimited, and existing plans are left alone for those happy enough with what they receive today.  If Time Warner wants to miss that opportunity, that’s their business.  Protecting rationally priced Internet access is ours.

"This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine."

Space aliens.  Bigfoot.  Amelia Earhart.  Road Runner Lite.

Wait.

Road Runner Lite?  The “mini-me” of broadband?  The perfect value plan for consumers who just need to check their e-mail and browse web pages?

Yes.  That Road Runner Lite.

I thought you heard of it.

Leonard Nimoy examines how you can pay less for Internet right now!

A lot of people have heard rumors about it, but for those in western New York, ferreting it out becomes a monumental event.  An all-nighter.  A mystery that Leonard Nimoy and an entire In Search Of… production team couldn’t easily solve.

StoptheCap! reader Meghan wasted spent her morning on a quest to find the elusive “Road Runner Lite,” if only to suggest it to the occasional person out there who is upset because they feel they’re spending too much on their Internet service now.

If she had this much trouble, imagine that casual browser and e-mail reader!  Calling doesn’t guarantee you’ll get instant information either.

The adventure turned out to be so ponderous, we were thinking of creating a PDF for you to enjoy at your leisure.  You could print it out and waste an entire ink cartridge, take it in the bathroom, read it before going to bed, and then use it for the bottom of a bird cage.  But then that would mean another 15 minutes of our life and yours we’d never get back.  Our thanks to Meghan, who sacrificed everything just to help others go bird watching, starting below the fold.

Leonard may still be looking for extraterrestrials, but our crack team has managed to find an option for those that might be co-opted into the Time Warner Re-Education campaign today to pay out of this world prices for broadband service tomorrow.

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