Michael Hiltzik: Time Warner Cable wants my help...again?
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I smile a rueful smile whenever my cable company (Time Warner) tells me it has to hold down the cost of programming, or it won’t have enough money left to keep its equipment and transmission lines in tip-top condition.
The joke around my house is that if Time Warner’s infrastructure were in tip-top condition, our Internet service wouldn’t go dead on average of more than once a month, as is its habit.
To a certain extent, I do sympathize with Time Warner in its battle with the broadcast networks, which is documented in my Wednesday column. It’s in the uncomfortable position of selling a product, entertainment content, manufactured by someone else, the way a car dealer is dependent on the kindness of GM or Ford. Not a happy place to be.
The cable company might have a better bargaining position if it could offer customers something special--say, the best technology available. That doesn’t seem to be Time Warner Cable’s style. It’s got among the poorest records in the country at rolling out the most advanced broadband Internet technology, known as DOCSIS 3.0, according to the trade publication Multichannel News--with only 11% of the homes in its marketing zones served, compared with 100% for Cablevision Systems. TWC may be focusing on markets where it faces competition from fiber-optic rivals such as Verizon’s FiOS service. Since FiOS hasn’t been installed in my neighborhood, I guess I’m out of luck.
The column begins below.
Time Warner Cable, it seems, wants to make the phenomenon of deja vu all its own. At least, that’s the impression I got a few days ago when an e-mail came from the company, asking me whether it should “roll over or get tough” with some nasty TV network trying to extort a few more bucks for programming. “Didn’t I just live through this nightmare?” I asked myself. Yes, it was only last November that the cable company unveiled its first “roll over or get tough” campaign, aimed at enlisting its subscribers in its battle to hold the line against the fee demands of News Corp., the owner of Fox broadcast stations and the Fox Sports Net regional sports channels. This time the target is Walt Disney Co., the owner of ESPN and ABC, among other TV offerings. But the pitch is the same: The networks are demanding enormous increases in the fees they charge the cable company to provide me, the consumer, with their shows. This is cutting into the money the cable company has left over “to make sure we can keep bringing you more great products and services.” (For the record, Time Warner Cable recorded net income of more than $1 billion last year.)
Read the whole column.
--Michael Hiltzik
