WXII in the Triad told its viewers that although the Time Warner usage cap plan was being put on hold, it was by no means gone for good.  The reporter told viewers the suspension came from “confusion” and “backlash” from Time Warner customers.

Time Warner’s talking point about saving the elderly money is on full display here, as the reporter tells viewers if they send only a couple dozen e-mails, it means they “end up paying more for those who spend hours on end gaming online.”  Of course, the report fails to mention those customers can save money today on a Road Runner Lite plan.  It’s really just a classic case of trying to pit customers against one another using the “us vs. them” card.  They hope dangling those shiny keys in customers’ faces will distract them from realizing that nobody’s cable bill ever really goes down — not unless you drop services along the way.

A talking point festival from Time Warner’s perspective.  I’m not sure if this report was a companion to another, but this on a standalone basis was simply a recitation of Time Warner’s claims.  Interestingly, the piece still quotes Time Warner maintaining the same plan — the gas gauge will then tell viewers “whether they need to go up a plan or down a plan.”

R-News is owned and operated by Time Warner.  There has traditionally been a firewall in place between R-News and Time Warner itself, and the reports have generally been far more balanced than the hackery at News 14 in North Carolina.  Still, they managed to use a broken up talking point from me about “loving the company.”  Of course, if the cap issue were dead and buried, as most of us in attendance were led to believe that afternoon, why not?  I’ve been happy with Road Runner since being one of the early beta testers back in 1998.  At the end of the press event that Thursday, I was thrilled for about … oh, 45 minutes, until getting home and reading the press release from Time Warner.

Senator Schumer’s very insistent point that “they are not going to use Rochester as a guinea pig for any tiered pricing plan, period” may come back to haunt Time Warner if they bring the dog and pony Cap ‘n Tier show back to the Flower City this fall.  There certainly wasn’t any wiggle room in the senator’s statement on the matter.  Will Time Warner defy the senior senator from New York?  We’ll be watching.

As we continue our journey across the cities that were originally intended to be part of Time Warner’s experimental caps, it’s not difficult to see that viewers had been complaining long and loud, not just to Time Warner, but also to area TV station news departments.

The temporary suspension announcement reached San Antonio late in the afternoon on Thursday, April 16th.  Same upset customers, same talking points from Time Warner that “education” is all that is needed to cram a rate hike and ration plan on customers.  They still don’t get it.

This was probably a quick report for the late afternoon newscast.  No packaged piece here.  But the anchor makes it clear customers didn’t like it, and also gave Time Warner’s views, making it balanced.

A source and one of our commenters has told StoptheCap! that Time Warner’s news operation in Rochester was asked not to report on yesterday’s critical service outage pending the arrival of an official corporate statement on the matter.  R-News has traditionally operated with a firewall in place between the newsroom and Time Warner Cable’s executives.  R-News was not supposed to answer to Time Warner Cable in how they handle their coverage.  Now there are questions about whether that firewall remains in place.

As of this afternoon, there was no mention of yesterday’s service outage on the R-News website at all.

NorthEast Radio Watch, which in my opinion is an essential weekly read for any and all things broadcast related in the northeast, has heard the same information.  Scott Fybush, who writes the weekly online newsletter, reflected on this and his past employment there as a reporter:

TWC did a remarkably poor job of getting the word out about the extent of the outage and its attempts to rectify the problem. At least here in Rochester, TWC’s phone lines were, understandably, in a state of constant busy for several hours.

So what about the cable news channels the company operates, such as R News in Rochester? We’re hearing that the word came down from upstairs not to mention anything at all about the issue until an official statement was available, which turned out to be some time after the problems had been resolved.

Noting here that your editor is a former R News reporter – and that there was a little more editorial independence back in our days there – we’re wondering: if R News and its sister channels are no longer making any pretense of independent news coverage of their parent company, why not at least put those channels to use as a readily-available way to let customers know about big outages like this…and maybe even ease the pressure on overloaded call centers?

If your Road Runner and/or Digital Phone was impacted by yesterday’s service outage, you can request (they usually won’t give it unless you ask) a one day service credit.  Visit Time Warner Cable, select your service area, and the click the Contact Us button at the top.  You can send an e-mail message with your account information, and request a one day credit for the service outage on April 26th.  [Hat tip: Christopher, who brought this to our attention.]