Page 6/The Batlalion/Wednesday, May 11 1983
Group
to look
urges B/CS Council
into cable quality
by Larry Couvillon
Battalion Reporter
A local group called the Cable
Improvement Association (CIA)
has formed to encourage Bryan
and College Station city govern
ments to investigate the quality
of Midwest Video Corp. and
Community Cablevision.
The CIA is asking the Bryan
City Council to investigate sever
al aspects of the cable com
panies, such as programming,
financial standings and video
quality.
cl The city grants franchise
licenses to the companies, and if
the council discovers any wrong
doings, pressure could be ap
plied to the companies to have
the violation corrected.
On March 15, the companies
(ook three stations from the
viewing list — WTBS from
Atlanta, WGN from Chicago
and KRIV from Houston. Steve
Beasley, assistant manager of
Midwest Video Corp., said there
is nothing he can do about get
ting the cancelled channels back.
1 Beasley said a governmental
body raised the copyright fees
for the cable companies to air all
independent distant signal sta
tions, or “superstations.” The
fees were raised from 2.5 per
cent to 13 percent of the cable
companys’ gross income.
The new copyright laws allow
cable operators to carry one in
dependent station without addi
tional charge. Beasley said Mid
west Video decided to keep
KHTV, channel 39 from Hous
ton, because Midwest had that
station on the air longer than the
others.
Dr. David Hill, group coordi
nator for CIA, said Midwest
should have polled customers to
find out what station viewers
prefered to keep.
Community Cablevision
Corp. refused to talk with the
press but did distribute a four-
page letter to all its customers
explaining why the channels
were deleted. In the letter, Com
munity assured its customers
that the “decision to remove, at
the present, the independents in
excess of the one independent
that we are allowed to carry
under current law without ex
cessive copyright fees, was made
with total disregard for any type
of monetary savings.”
Hill said the cable companies
could have passed the added
fees on to the customer’s cable
bill.
Beasley said he never figured
out how much of an added cost it
would be to each customer be
cause every subscriber’s cable
bill would go up regardless if
they have the superstations or
not.
Hill said about one third of
Midwest’s customers have the
premium package, which in
cluded the superstations. He
gave an example of one solution
which could cover the fee in
crease.
by paying for two other people
and myself,” Hill said.
Hill said the cable companies
should provide an itemized
Financial statement. The CIA
wants the city government to re
quire the cable companies to
“open Financial records of cable
operators to the press and the
public, as permitted by the fran
chise agreements.”
The CIA said the cable fran
chise are in violation of the
agreement because of poor
video quality.
The group also is urging the
City Council to look into the pos
sible failure of the cable com
panies to File proof of perform
ance reports with the Federal
Communications Commission
since 1978.
“If I, as a premium package
customer, were willing to pay for
not only my subscription to
WTBS, but also two other peo
ple who were on basic subscrip
tion and not getting WTBS,
then I would cover the increase
The franchise agreement
states that the cable operators
must provide service which is
“first class and in keeping with
the rates charged for the ser
vice” and is “of a maximum effi
ciency in all respects.”
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