Dear Cable Subscriber:
Yes, I am chairman of the cable advisory council for Charter Cable.
I will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have, but
I must tell you that cable costs and charges are an area in which we,
as committee members, have limited influence. Charter and the Connecticut
Dept of Public Utilities negotiate the rates charged to subscribers.
We can only convey to Charter the communities responses to the charges
(which is a regular subject at our meetings).
Our meetings are held every two months at Charter in Newtown (the next
meeting is scheduled for Tues. May 13, 2002 at 7:30 pm) Please feel
welcome to attend and make your concerns heard and ask questions directly
to the committee and Charter representatives.
Thank you for contacting me. In the future, please use your name and
the town in which you receive cable service, in order for me to talk
more directly with you or refer you to your town's council representative.
Respectfully,
John F. Sabo
Chairman
John,
As you know, I'm not on the Council any longer, so my name should probably
be removed from your list, but it does remind me that i wanted to submit
the attached article that appeared
in the New York Times a while ago, and ask that it be read aloud into
the record in its entirety at the next meeting, along with the following
from this email.
I urge the council, in the interest of fulfilling its statutory mandate
to advise Charter Communications on how best to serve its franchise,
to request Charter strongly follow the
lead of Cablevision and join with them to require that the Sports networks
either reduce their fees dramatically or agree to go off the expanded
basic tier and become optional.
According to the attached article, Cablevision lost only 1 in 60 subscribers
by dumping YES network ALTOGETHER. The losses would presumably be even
lower if it and all sports programming were merely put on an optional
package, so Charter's arguments that it would greatly damage their revenues
are baseless, and Charter's refusal to join with other
cable companies, or even write a letter of protest as you (then we)
asked last year, is inexcusable, as would be the council's refusal to
demand it of Charter.
I'm tired of paying a bill of what has now become over $150 a month,
up from the $15 I paid a month when I first got service, mostly by be
being forced to accept channels I don't
want to prop up the spurious claim that I'm "paying the same per
channel." That's an increase of 10 times over the last 15 years,
although I still watch essentially the same 25 or thirty
channels as i did then. If this were my phone bill I'd be paying $500
a month for that now.
Apparently the "shovelware" marketing concepts that Bill
Gates is famous for creating have rubbed off on Mr. Allen such that
he believes we are too stupid to see that paying a
lot more for mostly vapid content we don't want is wrong.Much as i like
the Yankees, I don't see why I should subsidize the 1 in 60 who really
wants them. According to the article
they are 5% to 8% of viewers but cost us 25 to 35% of our total bill.
We must stop, as Senator John McCain said, cable's "apparent willingness
and ability to gouge the American consumer."
