April 26, 2000

Let us return to those boring days of yesteryear, before cable TV

It was in the mid-1960's. There was no cable TV in Pacifica, with the exception of a rather informal system strung along a few back fences in parts of Linda Mar by a local man in the forlorn hope of cutting down on ghosts and improving reception from lousy to mediocre.

Park Pacifica was just being built. For a volunteer deputy registrar of voters, it was easy pickings. Almost everyone who answered the door had just moved in. I'd moved to Linda Mar myself only three years previously. One elderly woman came to the door. There were no preliminaries, like "good morning" or even "who the heck are you?" She launched into a heartfelt tirade denouncing a community that allowed people to buy a house where you couldn't even get TV. The poor woman seemed to hold me personally responsible for this failure to satisfy her needs, perhaps because she sensed intuitively that even as an unpaid volunteer registrar I vaguely represented the majesty and power of the government that had allowed this cruel trick to be played on her.

Shortly after, cable TV came to Pacifica. Wires were strung. Repeater boxes were placed on telephone poles. Citizens were no longer in the shadows, no longer receiving mostly ghosts and triple images. Stations were limited. Mostly the cable provided only what was available off local airwaves, but it was a huge improvement over poor reception or none.

Cable TV is a natural monopoly. Like electrical, gas and phone service, it runs high over or buried under city streets. Five or ten cable companies would make no sense. Competition would be irrational, so one of the few reasonable alternatives is one company, very tightly regulated, with rigidly controlled prices and service. Municipal ownership can also work, if it is tightly controlled. It does in San Bruno.

That's the theory. Unfortunately, once in place, it's fairly easy for a cable company to threaten to tied the community up in litigation if it doesn't get its way. It's a one sided battle, because the sacrifices needed to win that battle come mostly from the victims. (Read "customers"). Some families would sooner give up their firstborn than Monday night football, even for only one or two seasons.

Eventually the midwest newspaper that owned the cable system sold out to TCI, a Colorado company which proceeded to bungle it so thoroughly City Hall was receiving hundreds of phone calls a day from angry TV watchers. This was, as I remember, 1976. TCI was so bad I bought a share of stock just so I would get the annual report. It was a good buy. My $5 bought slightly more than one share. When I sold 12 years later, it returned $700. By that time TCI was doing a better job for its customers, but it was also doing a better job for its management. By 1988 the insiders controlled 51 percent of the Class B stock, each share of which had ten votes.

My memories were jogged recently when I got the price increase from AT and T, a company I used to like a lot more when it was more closely regulated. Now it sells me cable TV service as well as long distance. In fact, A.T. & T., the long distance phone company, is so used to making a profit from me they even bill me when I avoid using its services.

Some recent Reactor columns may be found at Paul Azevedo's website, http://www.thereactor.net/ Reach him by e-mail at Paul@thereactor.net