Back in the 1970s I did a long magazine story focusing on what was then Warner Cable but including the history of the cable business, and a counterexample to the corporate for-profit cable model in rural Pennsylvania.
In its beginning, delivering television by cable was sold as a no brainer good thing: it meant no more temperamental antennae, clear reception of local channels plus links to other channels all over the country. There were also myriad possibilities for more locally produced programs at a low cost, since transmitting more shows by cable didn't cost anything.
And there would be any number of new cable channels--so many that they could be very specialized. At last there would be movie channels, arts channels and even, you know, channels that challenge you intelligence rather than insult it, as well as various sports channels. And because you paid for all this with your cable fee, there would be no commercials!
Warner in particular promised interactivity that would give the viewer unprecedented power and influence. But their early experiments with an interactive cable device showed where this was going--a tool for advertisers and marketers, and as a novelty addition to programming that was even further dumbed-down.
Still, it was all so wondrous! There was one fly in the ointment, though. Because of the cost of laying cable, the "investment," there could only be one cable company linking a given municipality. In other words, a legal monopoly.
But there was a process, and municipalities could require spending to help local productions, and set all kinds of rules. If the company didn't stick to their agreements, the municipality could just throw them out.
So more than thirty years later, after cable companies essentially bought the loyalty of many municipal officials, as far as I know, not a single one has been asked to leave. Locally produced programs have generally been relegated to fixed camera coverage of local government meetings, and a "public access" channel, which most of the time is a multi-color bulletin board for local events and advertisers, with maybe the correct time.
Meanwhile there are a zillion cable channels owned by the same half dozen companies, and they are pretty much all the same no matter what they are called, and almost all of them show a plenitude of commercials. Cable companies have rivaled health insurers in relentless fee increases, and the biggest--Comcast and Time Warner among them--are the most arrogant and least interested in customer service. Both brag about their monopolies and the even larger monopolies their merger will create.
Now they're getting into the Internet business, and--according to some--attempting to turn it into the same high profit model as cable TV, with the tried and true tiers of service and expensive spats with "content providers."
Once again we go to the Brits for the stories, both from the Guardian. This one describes the business, and this one the impact on the Internet.
No comments:
Post a Comment