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Hernando Today

Modern Technology Shouldn't Infringe On Public Access Rights

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By JOHN HERBERT

Published: January 15, 2008

My old TV remote — which functioned just fine for 10 years — had a relatively easy-to-use 21 buttons. My new remote has 59. The old remote was simple; one button switched on the TV. On my new remote, I have to push four buttons before I can watch TV.
The cable guy who installed my new equipment was understanding, sympathetic and patient; he'd had plenty of practice. He moaned, for example, that he'd just spent 20 minutes trying to teach a 90-year-old customer how to handle the new remote.
Nobody in my family is even close to 90.But, we'd be "remotely" better served if we had earned graduate degrees in engineering from MIT. Why didn't I just forget the new remote and give in to more re-runs, instead?
I've had to endure the life-shattering exchange of remotes because Bright House, our cable provider, has decided to shift government access channels to an exotic high-tech echelon of TV transmission called "digital." Not that the switch has ushered in an obvious improvement in reception.
Bright House exercises a monopoly on cable service in Hernando County. The company can do pretty much anything it wants — no matter how loudly the powers-that-be in Brooksville protest.
The reason for my change, and chagrin, is that I want to continue to monitor county commission, school board, fire-rescue and other public meetings that have been moved to digital TV. Meetings, I should point out, that Florida's Sunshine Laws say should be open and free to all comers.
With Bright House switching these channels to hard-to-access digital, I had to get a much more complicated remote control wand as well as pay $15, plus tax, a month for the privilege of renting cable company equipment to continue to watch what had been part of my standard cable package until now.
Sounds very much like extortion to me. What Bright House has done is to juggle channels so that nonrevenue producing public access channels have given way to another battery of re-runs packaged with commercials.
OK. Bright House, like any other corporation, wants to show a tidy profit. And its ability to make all these inconvenient changes has been mandated by our state Legislature in Tallahassee. A switch to digital is inevitable down the road. Still, it's a neat trick to convince the customer to purchase something he or she doesn't want and doesn't really need.
Why Bright House's rush, and why the expense? Senior citizens and others on low or fixed incomes aren't going to take kindly to paying $15 a month for anything. And that price is only for starters.
Bright House has a history of raising cable rates at least 5 percent a year. That's even a higher rate than annual inflation. In no time at all, five years at most, we'll all be paying more than $20 a month to access digital TV, the only show in town except for satellite.
So, the obvious question: Why not switch to satellite? Anyone living in a gated, maintenance-free community pays a monthly service charge that includes a share of a group subscription from Bright House. Cable comes with the house; why add satellite TV on top of that? Most of us aren't so heavily into sports that we absolutely demand expanded coverage.
It's a waste of time to complain to the commissioners in Brooksville about digital fees. The answer is to work over our representatives in Tallahassee and even in Washington and to emphasize to them we don't like being ripped off; we expect they'll act accordingly.
It should be mandatory that our cable companies provide public access TV both easily and cost-effectively. I suspect that Bright House has already promised something similar in exchange for its favored position as the sole cable provider in Hernando and other counties. It'll take the judicial system to find out.
Realizing they've created a problem, Washington is issuing $40 coupons to anyone who has to replace their classic rabbit ears or other so-called low-tech devices with updated digital. That will be 34 million coupons. Another big-government program? And one that might work? Give me a break.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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