Media Wars......
Media wars have come to this small time West Texas market! Full page ad's are flying in the newspaper from both sides in the fray. The participants are the local ABC affiliate KMID, hereafter called the Yokels and the cable provider, Cox Communications, hereafter referred to as the Evil Monopoly.
The facts as deciphered from the newspaper ads are this. The Yokels have declared that the Evil Monopoly should have to pay them 25¢ for every cable subscriber, i.e. a charge for providing ABC to the cable lineup. The Evil Monopoly has declared that "no, we're the city designated cable monopoly, we won't pay a penny". The Evil Monopoly is threating to jerk the ABC cable connection if the Yokels persist. No Stupid Bowl.......no Oprah! These are the simple facts....obfuscated effectively by both sides in their print tirades.
I hereby declare myself neutral in this contest and so will be completely objective in the discussion here. And so I add these further facts as the plain unvarnished truth. Cox Communications, the Evil Monopoly, is probably the most hated business in town and would jack up their prices yet again, to sell kiddie porn if they thought they could get away with it. They are vile and disgusting examples of a quasi-utility gone unchecked.
When I first contracted for cable service, not more than 10 years ago, the price was a reasonable $20/month for mostly basic service which included just about every channel I cared to view. I now pay over $40/month. I can't think of a single service I pay for that has gone up 100% in ten years. Some have gone down. Every time the Evil Monopoly has jacked up their rates, $1 here, $1.95 there, they have made some pablum statement concerning their service to the viewer in bringing us yet another blockbuster channel such as The Lutheran Cooking Channel, The Malaysian Garment Channel, or The Shetland Pony Training Channel. Moreover, when I moved into a new house two years ago, after waiting 10 days [w/o the tube] for the "service representative" to find the time to come out, I was charged almost $100 to have my system turned on and "checked out". This "service" consisted of approximately 8 minutes of hard work which involved hooking up one wire in the box, and looking at the TeeVee. "Yup, it's on, your service is checked".
In the current full page ad, the Evil Monopoly asks that we call the KMID-TV yokels and tell them to cease and desist in their demand for a piece of the Cox Cable profit. Their logic is that the network TV channels have always been free over the airwaves, and should remain so.......thus coincidentally allowing them, The Evils, to make a profit with no cost. I'll be making a call all right. To my friends on the City Council. The subject of the call will involve using whatever municipal powers they have over the Evil Monopoly to jerk their corporate chains into providing reasonable service. And I hope that Darth Vader, or whomever is in charge of the Evil Monopoly, will come to realize that the entertainment media is more than oversaturated with TeeVee options, movies, DVD's, and the Internet. Their days of continually jacking up prices to bring us more fine entertainment like The Czechoslovakian Fishing Channel, are over!
Media wars have come to this small time West Texas market! Full page ad's are flying in the newspaper from both sides in the fray. The participants are the local ABC affiliate KMID, hereafter called the Yokels and the cable provider, Cox Communications, hereafter referred to as the Evil Monopoly.
The facts as deciphered from the newspaper ads are this. The Yokels have declared that the Evil Monopoly should have to pay them 25¢ for every cable subscriber, i.e. a charge for providing ABC to the cable lineup. The Evil Monopoly has declared that "no, we're the city designated cable monopoly, we won't pay a penny". The Evil Monopoly is threating to jerk the ABC cable connection if the Yokels persist. No Stupid Bowl.......no Oprah! These are the simple facts....obfuscated effectively by both sides in their print tirades.
I hereby declare myself neutral in this contest and so will be completely objective in the discussion here. And so I add these further facts as the plain unvarnished truth. Cox Communications, the Evil Monopoly, is probably the most hated business in town and would jack up their prices yet again, to sell kiddie porn if they thought they could get away with it. They are vile and disgusting examples of a quasi-utility gone unchecked.
When I first contracted for cable service, not more than 10 years ago, the price was a reasonable $20/month for mostly basic service which included just about every channel I cared to view. I now pay over $40/month. I can't think of a single service I pay for that has gone up 100% in ten years. Some have gone down. Every time the Evil Monopoly has jacked up their rates, $1 here, $1.95 there, they have made some pablum statement concerning their service to the viewer in bringing us yet another blockbuster channel such as The Lutheran Cooking Channel, The Malaysian Garment Channel, or The Shetland Pony Training Channel. Moreover, when I moved into a new house two years ago, after waiting 10 days [w/o the tube] for the "service representative" to find the time to come out, I was charged almost $100 to have my system turned on and "checked out". This "service" consisted of approximately 8 minutes of hard work which involved hooking up one wire in the box, and looking at the TeeVee. "Yup, it's on, your service is checked".
In the current full page ad, the Evil Monopoly asks that we call the KMID-TV yokels and tell them to cease and desist in their demand for a piece of the Cox Cable profit. Their logic is that the network TV channels have always been free over the airwaves, and should remain so.......thus coincidentally allowing them, The Evils, to make a profit with no cost. I'll be making a call all right. To my friends on the City Council. The subject of the call will involve using whatever municipal powers they have over the Evil Monopoly to jerk their corporate chains into providing reasonable service. And I hope that Darth Vader, or whomever is in charge of the Evil Monopoly, will come to realize that the entertainment media is more than oversaturated with TeeVee options, movies, DVD's, and the Internet. Their days of continually jacking up prices to bring us more fine entertainment like The Czechoslovakian Fishing Channel, are over!
