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Never have I written anything for these pages which inspired as much response as last Tuesday's column about TCI, the big cable-TV company based in Englewood.
Of the many messages, only one was negative toward me. It was an anonymous e-mail which said I was a moron for expecting TCI to operate within the law and to treat its customers honorably.
And I had to concede that the writer had a point. Given how TCI has operated, perhaps only a moron could expect even simple decency from that company. Anybody sensible would expect rates to go up while TCI continues to replace familiar channels with channels that it owns.
But, aside from complaining, is there anything we can do about it?
I pondered canceling my cable. There is a local repeater
with a few Denver stations. But when I tried that before, I
discovered that somebody nearby had either an old Ford or a
new arc-welder, in operation when we were attempting to
practice family values and watch Saturday Night Live
with our children. Scratch that.
There are the big satellite dishes. But my yard is small (about 4,500 square feet, and in these enlightened days, anything under 10,000 square feet is considered blight), and with various computers, modems, telephones, fax machines, scanners, stereos, etc., I already have enough mysterious electronic stuff to maintain.
That maintenance problem also holds with the new small
dishes which offer digital reception. Although they provide
a good signal and friends speak highly of them, they don't
carry Denver TV. You still get the networks, but your NBC
might come from San Francisco and your ABC from Charlotte,
as does your local
news. As a columnist for a Denver
newspaper, I should know what's on the Denver broadcast
news.
So there's no convenient way for me to take matters into my own hands. There was a time when people turned to government to address common problems.
Until the Cable Act of 1992, the cable industry was regulated locally. Companies needed the permission of a town or city government to string their lines down streets and alleys. To get that permission, the cable company entered into a franchise agreement with the local government.
Typically, this allowed the town board or city council to set rates and otherwise regulate the cable company. The regulators were also the customers, and in my years of watching the Kremmling Board of Trustees and the Salida City Council deal with cable, I concluded that this system worked pretty well.
Probably too well, because the cable companies donated plenty of money to senate and congressional candidates in the late 1980s. Congress responded by effectively removing local regulation when it passed the 1992 Cable Act.
Now, you'd expect Democrats to do that. After all, they
supposedly believe in federal authority at the expense of
state and local powers. And so, when the Republicans took
control of Congress in 1995, pledged to devolution
and returning power to state and local governments,
it seemed reasonable to expect them to get the federal
government out of matters that had been handled by local
governments.
Reasonable, perhaps, but not practical. Put yourself in a cable baron's position. Do you want to have to deal with hundreds of local governments and to have to contribute to myriads of candidates in scattered backwaters?
Of course no. It's so much simpler to keep the power in Washington, where there's one-stop shopping for legislators.
And so the Telecommunications Act of 1996, passed by
Republicans who give frequent and fervid lip service to
local control,
did not return regulatory authority
to local governments.
Our problems with TCI are just one aspect of a much bigger problem -- we have nothing to say about decisions which affect our lives and livelihoods. Drew Lewis and Phil Anschutz hire lobbyists and make campaign contributions, and presto, Colorado loses 300 miles of main-line railroad. Wal-Mart decides that there are too many small retailers in your town, and presto, you get a 24-hour superstore. TCI decides to render unto Murdoch, and presto, you get gouged and insulted.
And when you turn to local government, you're told that it can't act, that these decisions come from Washington. And when you look at Washington, you see high-powered lobbyists and campaign contributions, so that the corporate interests overwhelm any public interest.
In other words, our own government, supposedly the agent
of the public, insures that we get gouged and jerked
around. It's the ultimate triumph of privatization,
I guess -- we've got a privatized government.
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