Recently, our local cable company, Adelphia, was taken over by Time Warner Cable. Within weeks of the takeover, TWC announced it was discontinuing one channel altogether and moving seven others from the "standard cable and basic broadcast" package to their "basic digital" package. There was no mention of reducing the monthly charge for those customers who stayed with the old package.
The reason given for moving these channels had to do with giving them extra bandwidth to accommodate their digital cable offering — or some such techno-hogwash.
The seven channels deleted from the standard cable offering are HSN, C-SPAN2, The California Channel, Country Music, Animal Planet, Travel Channel and, last but not least, TCM.
Among these seven are some of the channels most watched, especially by senior subscribers. If the real reason for this move was a technical one, why did they choose to take away some of the most popular channels? I see at least 30 less popular channels they could have picked on.
So now us elderly people, mostly living on fixed incomes, have to shell out about $10 a month more to see our old-time movies and the animals. That's $5 a month more for the digital cable and another $5 month to rent the digital box.
One of the installers told me they are very busy these days putting in the digital boxes in people's homes just so the folks can get the moved channels again.
I really think Ventura County should look into this situation. Is it really technical need? Or is it corporate greed?
— Patrick S. O'Malley, Oxnard
Based on several phone conversations with Time Warner personnel over the past weeks, I'm convinced that the customer service reps, and even some of their bosses, aren't given the necessary information to help us. This leads me to think that moving those channels is just corporate stupidity.