Over the next several days, StoptheCap! will be rolling out an interesting story about what happens when a local community decides it needs more than what corporate-owned cable and telephone behemoths are willing to give.  It’s an important story for any community pondering how to create new jobs in a high tech economy, provide state of the art broadband service to small businesses, colleges, and residents, and stop companies from rationing broadband services to customers at top dollar pricing with limits, caps, and overlimit fees.  It’s also a story about what lengths those companies will go to stop that from ever happening.

But first, an introduction to Wilson, North Carolina.

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!

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.]

KVUE-TV is Austin examined the impact Time Warner’s proposed usage caps would have on younger users, part of the “Internet generation.”  Disproportionately heavier users of the net, these “heavy users” are often the ones who will be the first to lose the innovative net services they have depended on, because of the exhorbitant charges Time Warner was proposing to access them.  But the impact doesn’t stop there.  Innovative broadband applications that become unaffordable to use cause job losses, hurt the economy, and allow the United States to fall behind other countries that charge lower prices for faster Internet access.

A straightforward and honest package from KVUE, focusing on the “younger user” angle, and how usage caps impact them in their daily lives.  “Worried,” is the common reaction among younger users accustomed to flat rate Internet.  Many students spend more time online than they do watching television, a factor that obviously concerns a cable operator that sells packages of video channels they may choose to reject.

[Editor’s Note: Time Warner suspended, at least temporarily, the “experiment” in usage caps last week, according to company officials.  This news report was produced and broadcast prior to that announcement.]

Residents across Time Warner’s Triad region in North Carolina continued protesting the company’s proposed broadband usage cap experiment last week, calling it unfair and bordering on monopolistic.  Greensboro’s city council was “on the same page” on the issue of resisting the incumbent cable broadband provider and were seeking competive alternatives, as WGHP reports:

Fox 8 in the Triad covers the story from the perspective of a local government trying to find ways to respond to consumer complaints about Time Warner’s experiment.  Cities struggle to find competitive alternatives, but discover that’s an improbability during the current economic crisis.  This report features a dial-up modem handshake sequence (the noise you hear towards the end of the report.)  Many consumers in this part of North Carolina may be stuck going back to dial-up Internet access if usage caps this draconian return.