Cable followup

Several people have complained about my lack of followup on my promise to report on the SF Media Advocates cable meeting on Thursday.

Part of my hesitation has been that the meeting was not particularly conclusive, and part of it has been that I managed to misplace my notes. There is a decent report on the meeting at BeyondChron (although the author inexplicably hyphenates Media Alliance).

What I took away from the meeting was a deep sense of unease about any agreement we end up reaching with Comcast. The company has a record of massive rate hikes, bad treatment of workers, terrible privacy policies, and an overall pattern of contempt for its employees and customers. The union-sponsored Comcast Watch has more details on various incidents and patterns.

There were pretty much three constituencies at the meeting:

• The first consisted of publi access producers, who are sick and tired of Comcast (and AT&T and Viacom before them) pissing all over Public Access, by furnishing crappy equipment, little or no training, understaffing the facilities, and undermining any possible sense of continuity to the shows by requiring producers to enter a lottery for a time slot every 6 months.


• People pissed off by the high prices (more than $50/month, minimum), bad service, or other specific consumer issues with Comcast.


• People concerned with the broader issues surrounding the cable franchise, including the digital divide, public access to government, open access, and so on.

What do these folks want from the franchise agreement? There was significant sentiment that we may not want a franchise agreement at all! The record of various cable companies' adherence to agreements with the city has not been stellar, to say the least. There is some concern that any franchise agreement will be difficult to enforce, and that the city may end up with the short end of the stick. Therefore, many folks felt that we need to seriously consider municipalization (as one comment to an earlier post recommended).

Obviously any push for municipalization will be an uphill battle, but probably not unwinnable. It's certainly worth holding as an option, if Comcast tries to treat San Francisco as it did San Jose.

Specific proposals for things we could demand from our cable system, whoever runs it, included expanded Public Access channels, perhaps including a spanish- or chinese-language channel, lower rates, an end to tiered pricing, use of the cable system to provide internet access to all areas of the city, a series of community access centers around the city that would be wired to originate local programming, and a cardcheck provision in the case of a union organizing drive.

The meeting concentrated on ideas and brainstorming, rather than conclusions. Some of the main points that were raised were that there needs to be a political push on this issue--that we can't leave it up to the city to do the right thing, we need to make it a real issue; there needs to be a broad coalition around the fight; we need to spread the word both--about Comcast and their record of treating communities badly and about the alternatives, like San Bruno and Ashland Oregon, where cable TV and internet access are something like $14 a month; Comcast has a terrible labor record, and we need to make sure the Labor Council is aware that the city is considering signing a contract with a company that engages in vicious and extensive union-busting.

The most important thing I took out of the meeting was that we need to make it clear that this is not just about more TV channels. It's also about internet connections, and it very well may soon be about telephones, medical care and who knows what all.

I have some other thoughts, which I will post when I can get a chance, as well as some of the resources that I have run across in my research of this issue.