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The last time I checked, Salida had 17 full-time police officers to serve and protect our population of about 5,000 people. That works out to 34 police per 10,000 people, well above the Colorado average of 25 and the national average of 24.
So you'd think that with all this law-enforcement personnel, the city would be able to act when its regulations are violated.
But that depends on who's violating the regulations. At issue here is the local cable-television monopoly, owned and operated by TCI, based in Englewood.
On Nov. 1, TCI eliminated KRMA, the Denver educational
TV station, from our cable line-up. In its place, we got
KTVD, the United Paramount Network station. That is, we can
now see Baywatch
instead of National Geographic
specials.
This move upset many Salidans -- about 1,500 people signed petitions, which were last week presented to the city council, which issues the franchise agreement with TCI.
One provision of that agreement is that TCI give 30 days' notice before changing its channel selection. At most, TCI might have provided 10 days' notice of that change, and so there was hope that the city might be able to act against TCI.
But it doesn't look as though we'll be able to do
anything to them,
said Pat Brooks, our city
administrator. You could read the franchise agreement so
that the local office has to give 30 days' notice, if the
local office knows about it. But if the head office doesn't
tell the local office, then TCI could argue that it can't
give the 30 days' notice.
The switch from KRMA to KTVD came about under the
federal must-carry
law. It's rather complicated, but
in essence, we're apparently in the Denver Area of
Dominant Influence,
and Denver commercial stations are
entitled to up to a third of Salida's 30 regular cable
channels -- if they can get their signal to Salida.
KTVD installed a microwave receiver in Salida, thereby forcing its way into our limited cable spectrum, whether we wanted it or not.
The must-carry
law was passed for small
commercial television stations, which might have trouble
selling ads if they can't bully their way onto cable
systems and thereby expose themselves to a larger
audience.
Why do they deserve this solicitude? Beats me. Martha
and I own and operate a small magazine. If we want shelf
space so people can see our product and be exposed to our
advertisers, we have to hustle it ourselves. But if you're
a TV station, Uncle Sam will guarantee exposure -- and this
when our politicians often speak of the glories of
thefree market.
Besides putting KTVD in place of KRMA, TCI also jerked
CSPAN here, replacing it with the 24-hour Fox news channel.
We already had CNN for 'round-the-clock news, but Rupert
Murdoch, the Fox billionaire owner, decided that CNN was
too liberal,
and came up with his own news
channel.
Just how he muscled his way onto the TCI cable systems
is a mystery. I finally got through to the Denver TCI
public-relations department, and heard I really don't
know why they decided to carry Fox News instead of CSPAN --
those decisions are made at a high corporate level.
Also without anything like 30 days' notice, we lost
Court-TV for some brain-dead rerun channel called
fX,
which, as you might have guessed, is another
Murdoch-Fox subsidiary.
And so, of the 30 cable channels in Salida, Murdoch controls three absolutely, and doubtless influences a few others through interlocking ownership that I don't have time to track down.
And this seems to happen on account of federal
regulations, with our local elected officials unable to act
on our behalf -- even though we have a Republican Congress
that frequently gives lip service to devolving power
from the federal government to state and local
governments.
Except that doesn't happen when local regulation might interfere with the profits of big corporations. Some might note that Rupert Murdoch also owns HarperCollins, the publisher that gave Newt Gingrich, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, a $4.5 million book advance. Cynics might conclude there's a connection between that and the growth of Murdoch cable channels.
Now, it's fun to make fun of the People's Republic of Boulder. But Boulder did right on Nov. 5 when its citizens voted to refuse to renew TCI's franchise.
TCI ignores inconvenient local regulations and treats its customers like morons who have no interest in science or public affairs. Our job, in TCI's view, is to pay our bill every month and to put up with whatever slime and swill that Rupert Murdoch and Paramount want to shove in front of us.
So, good for Boulder for getting rid of TCI. And it's too bad that Salida's 17 cops can't enforce the city's cable-TV agreement with the same vigor that they apply to citing children for riding their bicycles on the sidewalk.
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