Spotty cable carriage of
DTV multicast channels
Easy to trace why they’re blue: it’s the lacks of their tiers
APTS, PBS and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association issued a statement last week to placate hundreds of angry callers to several pubTV stations whose main channels had shifted from their usual spots on cable.
In their 2005 Public Television Digital Cable Carriage Agreement, APTS and NCTA concurred that each secondary public TV stations — the ones with smaller audiences in multistation markets — could choose between having only its main channel carried in the local cable systems’ cheapest and most widely available “analog” tier, or having all their DTV multicast channels carried in the cablers’ digital tiers. Most of those stations chose the latter.
Viewers objected even though the area’s most-viewed public TV station with its multicast channels was carried on the cable systems’ most widely available tier.
Some viewers nevertheless want, or even prefer, the smaller stations and have lost access to them because they subscribe to the basic analog service. To get some secondary stations back, they’d have to upgrade to digital cable service, which typically requires renting a settop cable box from the local cable franchise.
To complicate matters, some of these unhappy viewers mistakenly believed the boxes in question are those now-famous converter boxes that the feds will help you buy. Even some pubTV station managers confuse these two kinds of “digital boxes.”
Complaints poured in to stations in states including Maryland, West Virginia, Illinois, Delaware and Florida, where cable systems, many owned by biggest cable operator, Comcast, were shuffling channels.
Last week’s joint statement from NCTA and the pubcasters stressed that the 2005 agreement offers subscribers not only “expanded digital programming options from those stations that have opted for expanded digital carriage, but it also ensures that all analog cable customers will continue to receive quality public television programming from at least one PTV station in every television market.”
Maryland Public Television had an avalanche of calls, especially from the D.C. suburbs, where it’s a secondary station to WETA. Cable subscribers without digital boxes could no longer watch MPT’s selection of multicast channels, including shows about Maryland issues and the V-me Spanish-language channel. Neither is carried by Washington stations.
MPT spokesman Michael Golden had no count of the calls that began pouring in after Comcast made the switch April 14. But the influx was enough to keep several staffers busy.
“Any time there’s any kind of change, people will be confused,” Golden said. “Once the dust settles, viewers will be happy with what’s happening because they’ll have more public TV to choose from.”
The problem is, some viewers will get annoyed again every time they see rental fees for digital boxes on their monthly cable bills. Comcast is offering the boxes without charge for 12 months. After that, digital-tier subscribers will be charged a fee. The fee varies by market; in Maryland, it’s around $3.65. Unless they opt for a more pricy cable package.
Beth A. Bacha, Comcast Communications v.p. for the Eastern region, stressed that many cable providers, not just Comcast, are part of the 2005 agreement. She also argued that the carriage changes displease a small proportion of Comcast subscribers.
“The vast majority – almost 75 percent – are already digital customers and did not need to do anything at all,” she said.
She added that the cable operator tried to alert customers “well ahead of time” through messages on bills and channel crawls.
Sympathetic station execs, continue to grumble. At West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Executive Director Dennis Adkins says he wasn’t aware that viewers in Wheeling, Morgantown and Martinsburg, on the edges of the state, might need what he terms “special equipment” to watch the state net.
Adkins said the state net did indeed elect to have its multicast channels carried on the higher tier, not fully realizing that “when we have pledge drives and fundraisers, we can’t get those markets unless people have boxes for access to the upper tier.”
He estimates about 30 percent of the station’s total audience is affected.
In central Illinois, several communities can no longer receive WILL from Champaign-Urbana on its usual channel. “We knew this was a possibility, but it still kind of caught us off-guard,” David Thiel, p.d. at WILL-TV in Urbana, Ill., said of the complaints.
Web page posted May 20, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Current LLC
