I see that Mayor John Barrett III (D-North Adams) is filing a lawsuit against Time Warner Cable over the upcoming changes.
I do not claim to be an expert on telecommunications law (or any law, for that matter, though I’ve picked up a bit of intellectual property law by virtue of being both a composer and a theorist who studies quotation), but I do know when a large corporation is trying to alter the social and political landscape for personal gain. Follow me on this.
Since the time of Shays’ Rebellion, and probably even before that, western Massachusetts has been…shall we say, considered a different place than the rest of the state. If I’m reading my map correctly, we here in the Tunnel City are actually closer to two other state capitals (Albany and Hartford) than we are to Boston – and we’re almost exactly the same distance from Concord as we are from Boston. Nevertheless, we are Massachusettsians too, and what happens in OUR state capital affects us more than what happens in Albany.
Don’t get me wrong – being a state government junkie, I enjoy watching the public affairs programs on Capital News 9; however, it’s academic interest, since no New York State law will ever affect day-to-day functioning in North Adams. And yes, we do have NECN, way up there on Channel 70. If you get the most basic package, I do not believe you get NECN.
Time Warner, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that Albany is the center of our telecommunications universe. Why have they decided this?
Commerce.
Time Warner does not care if the citizens of North Adams are able to get information through their system about their state government.
Time Warner does not care if the citizens of North Adams can stay up-to-date on the issues that affect them directly on Beacon Hill.
Time Warner does not care if the citizens of North Adams are in the dark about major political and policy debates of great importance.
Time Warner is out to make more money. How does Time Warner make more money? Ad sales and revenue. Since North Adams is closer to Albany than to Boston, many people here in NA, when looking for items you can only find in larger cities, choose Albany because it is geographically closer. Time Warner sees this, and knows it can charge more for ads out here if the businesses in Albany don’t have to worry about competition from businesses in Boston.
It’s all about the Benjamins, as the kids used to say.
Given the choice between making sure the citizens of North Adams are able to get information about their state government and making more money, they’re going with the second option every time. It’s also the main reason C-SPAN is likely to be moved to the “standard” tier (past channel 22, which costs more). C-SPAN doesn’t have ads. You can’t make money on C-SPAN.
I can hear the fundamentalist libertarians: “So why not get a dish or avoid cable altogether?”
(1) Dish operates under a similar principle; in their parlance, our “local channels” would be Albany channels, and you have the same issue. Plus, no public access on a dish.
(2) I was without cable for 2 weeks when I first moved here. You can barely pick up two channels, and both are Albany-based channels.
There’s the Internet, to be sure…and that is another argument for Net Neutrality. But even so, internet access was spotty out here until it was demanded by those interested in making sure people could get to it. Remember that this area didn’t have touch-tone until the early 1990s.
How about Cable Competition? Be careful for what you wish. Verizon would LOVE for that to happen, but then the “unprofitable” channels (read: public access, PBS, C-SPAN, et al) could easily be dropped in the price wars that would result. Public affairs need airing, and no amount of Capitalism Über Alles is going to fix that.
What can we do? Contact Rep. John Olver at 202-225-5335 (Washington, DC) or 413-442-0946 (Pittsfield). Another Massachusetts representative, Rep. Ed Markey (who has been in the forefront of Net Neutrality issues), is Chair of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. His staffer Maura Quinn, who is gathering information on this issue, can be reached at the Medford office – 781-396-2900.
Sen. John Kerry chairs the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Innovation. You can contact him at 202-224-2742 (Washington, DC) or 413-785-4610 (Springfield). Sen. Edward Kennedy is Chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and inasmuch as this is both a Massachusetts issue and an educational issue (access to information about government), he’s probably worth contacting too. He can be reached at 202-224-4543 (Washington, DC) or 877-472-9014 (Boston, toll-free).
WF
I’m on the other side of the state from you (Salem) but I’m no less worried; I’m the IT person for our local access station. I have a question I’ll have for my state rep (Keenan): Deval is splitting up the Department of Telecommunications and Energy (the old PUC) and apparently going with a one-member commission on the telecom side.
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Is this an attempt to give in to that bill that was filed to devolve franchise authority to the state. The bill libertarians seem to like because it takes media away from “government” as the Salem News put it a few weeks ago?
(the usual “why should I pay extra for xxx sort of argument.)
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I think Deval is selling us both out. And why not? Cable is supposed to be a privliege and there is always the Web and YouTube (never mind that SATV wasn’t able to stream the Halloween Parade last year because we couldn’t bleeping afford the bandwidth!)
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We’ll find out about Deval’s “public-private” partnership. Remember, he’s corporate to the core. And we will be sorry.
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Take care,
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Dave
Can you expand and explain this comment for laypeople not necessarily versed in “devolving franchise authority”? I don’t know what that means.
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Instead, all I get from your comment is a gratuitous Deval-slam.
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I’d encourage you to write this up in more detail as a separate post — if your worries are well-founded, it’s something we should all know about.
This has been on BMG before but I’ll repeat it. In Massachusetts, cities and towns issue “franchises” for cable operators (and now Verizon, but that’s another story.) Cities and towns negotiate services that the cable companies provide for them. These could range anywhere from a single “bulletin board” channel for the local government, all the way up to funding TV studios for the schools and public access facilities.
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Usually, the cable companies don’t want to be in that business so they fund local (and almost always non-profit) companies that get their operating budget from these fees. Whether there’s a full center or just a bulletin board, franchise fees are where the money comes from.
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They’re usually a small part of the average person’s cable bill, but they are much contested. The usual “I don’t use it so why do I have to pay for it?” argument, that is really and truly behind that bill in the House.
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The bill in the House–described elsewhere on BMG–would take the franchise authority away from cities and towns to address the perception that cities are dragging their feet against competing carriers like Verizon.
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(I have been through our city’s renewal process with Comcast, and I can assure you the delays were on their end.)
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If the franchise authority is put back to the state, it might–I would say it will–endanger funding of public access facilities.
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The latest development that has me concerned: Patrick is splitting the DTE (as reported in the Globe http://www.boston.co…); this will make the “telecommunications” part of the agency into a single-person board.
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This bothers me. The original poster already has no one at the state level to bring his concerns to; how will this help?
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Telecomms are no less important than utilities!
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Coupled with the earlier described bill, I am very concerned–if not convinced–that Patrick will streamline local franchise authority–and public access–out of existence. Since we have no intent from Patrick, I can only assume the worst.
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Take care,
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Dave