News and Politics | December 27, 2008 | 18 comments

Time Warner to pull 14 public access channels on December 31st

source: http://www.redroom.com/blog/jayne-lyn-stahl/dec-31-way-follow

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ladyjayne
On New Year's Eve, Time Warner Cable plans to shut down fourteen public access channels in the city of Los Angeles unless California Attorney-General Edmond G. (Gerry) Brown, Jr. acts to prevent it.

Cutting off access to independent programming is an assault on the First Amendment rights of citizens, and if it is allowed to happen will set a dangerous precedent for other cable behemoths nationally.

See link above for what you can do to stop this travesty from happening.
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18 comments // Time Warner to pull 14 public access channels on December 31st

  • arcticspirit
    • 0
      arcticspirit  

    • Don't sit there and blog about it. Do something!

      Incidentally..

      Those who are concerned about protecting the integrity of the First Amendment, independent programming, and preventing a media shark from swallowing all the little fish, must act quickly by contacting California Attorney General Brown at: agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov, and urging him to seek injunctive relief under the California Business and Professions Code 17200, Section 3, Unfair Business Practices.

      Yeah sometimes you have to rebel, but pick your fights, so they count.

    • 3 years ago
  • DJMatt2
    • 0
      DJMatt2  
    • Image

    • I agree that this should warrant a court challenge, but contrary to DistantPlanet's claim, this is NOT a First Amendment issue.

      The requirement for providing public access channels is based on a long-established and flawed premise about the telecommunications itself... specifically that it is "the public's spectrum" and that government serves as the "guardians" of that trust. In truth the only group that government represents in these instances is itself and its friends in the lobbying and special interest groups. The corporate assimilation of terrestrial radio and the ongoing dispute over online royalty fees should be proof enough of that.

      At issue here is money and power. For several decades (yes, DECADES), cable companies have reaped the benefits of having a government-sanctioned monopoly over local communities. They have been able to use government to give them the land for their cables, they have been allowed to set whatever prices they felt were reasonable (with the government "claiming" to have veto power), and set up a mad collection of "package deals" with the ultimate goal of trying to get every single customer signed up for every single service possible. And the only price that they have to pay is that they have to go along with that "public's spectrum" myth and provide a couple of channels for "public access".

      They have gotten very fat and very wealthy off that arrangement.

      But now they don't have that monopoly. Now they have to compete with phone companies like Verizon and (the new) AT&T not only for Internet access and phone service, but now with cable services as well (i.e. Fios). There is the Internet providing movies. You can download movies through iTunes. There are the digital satillite services like DirecTV and Dish.

      So now every channel counts for them. And if they can get away with pulling 14 cable channels originally considered "public access" and whore them out to broadcasters, so be it. After all, they can probably claim that more people would watch ESPN35-40 and a few Pay-Per-View specials on championship toenail clipping than would ever watch public access.

      And that's something that the LA people should pay attention to. This stuff didn't happen overnight. Time-Warner counted on you guys doing nothing about it until the last minute, but that doesn't mean that they came up with this recently. Go after your local officials and find out what sort of contract was struck. Are they still under contract or did they change it recently? If that contract requires those 14 public access channels, then there's your court case.

    • 3 years ago
  • DistantPlanet
    • 0
      DistantPlanet  

    • Over the last couple decades the laws that require cable companies to provide for public/educational/government access television (PEG, or Public Access) have slowly been eroded. Time Warner probably feels that the City of Los Angeles can no longer require them to provide that service, as is historically the case. The Attorney General should file suit and this should go to court. The interpretation of the first amendment may be at issue.

    • 3 years ago
  • SushiBandit
  • 1percent
  • retran
    • 0
      retran  

    • Modern corporations have incentive to do whatever they can to reap the MOST profit, by doing the absolute least. That's only magnified with a publicity traded company. We should think hard about making reforms and regulations to either really reign in these corporations in general, or make them illegal for things like media and utilities. I'm all for innovation, entrepreneurship, and responsibility, but why do we allow for-profit companies to have such an important role in our lives when they can perform actions that the vast majority of the public is against, yet the public has no recourse except messy lawsuits? not to mention in this case, the lawsuit can only be initiated by one individual with unpredictable and conflicted interests.

    • 3 years ago
  • RaceBannon
    • 0
      RaceBannon  
    • retran:

      The reason we expect private companies is likely because at some point our country made freedom and capitalism equivalent. Our national psyche is that of consumers and to us good consumers are patriots.

      I'll post a video in a minute about the whole marketing/pr thing...

    • 3 years ago
  • lapedro
  • cheezynuts
  • retran
  • xxxCiscoKiDxxx
  • RaceBannon
  • damnneargenius
    • 0
      damnneargenius  

    • BOO!!!

      Prevent it.

      Or put it to a public vote and make Warner upgrade all the studios to brand new equipment if they remove them and then they get voted back in.

      Sounds fair enough right?

      -BBB

    • 3 years ago
  • jubal
  • Commentor
    • 0
      Commentor  

    • Public Access Cable stations are the current equivalent
      of the public square where the average person could stand on their soapbox and express their views.

      No one goes to the public square or public houses for that sort of political and public policy debate ... they stay home and watch TV. The Internet is changing it slowly but lets face it not everyone has internet access especially the poorer and disenfranchised. Nearly everyone has TV.

      :Local governments like the "Government" part of access ... where the Government gets to show council meetings and things from its perspective what about the public's perspective.

      TV/radio stations are there in the public interest and for the public good though for the most part these days they're for the good of profit.

    • 3 years ago
  • asherp
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