Commentary––

Blessed Competition For Cable TV

By William A. Collins

Competition,

Good to see;

When we want,

To watch TV.

Groton may be best known for spawning nuclear submarines and for its share of cutesy Mystic, but it has plenty else going for it, too. Turns out that it is Groton’s town government, not megacorporations, that delivers local residents their electricity and water.

And now that city’s civic fathers and mothers are taking this healthy model a step further –– they’re going to offer cable TV. It’s 20 years since the legislature deregulated cable, and we’ve been futilely waiting for competition ever since. Instead all we’ve gotten is mergers, monopoly, and price increases. If it weren’t for satellite TV, we hate to think what we’d be paying by now. Next year we’ve been promised that it will only get worse, except perhaps in Groton.

There once was a happier time, dating largely to the New Deal, when the monopolistic practices of utilities were held more in check. Regulatory agencies were created to control water, power, phone, and airwaves. Over time, though, that system has reversed direction. Now it is the utilities that control the agencies, and deregulation has become the political watchword in Washington and Hartford. Not surprisingly the result has been a growth in monopolies, cartels, concentration of ownership, higher prices, and reduction of choice. That scenario prevails for water, power, telephone, TV, radio, and, of course, cable.

The worst is radio. Not so long after deregulation, Clear Channel Communications (CCC) was discovered to own 1,200 separate stations, five in the Hartford/Waterbury market alone. (Poor second-place Cumulus only owns 270). Unabashed, CCC had hoped to gain even more freedom to grow under last summer’s famous Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling to ease media restrictions. But luckily the public had caught wise. The alleged banning of the Dixie Chicks from its stations may have been the final straw. Thus the FCC balked, and the radio moguls will have to bide their time a little longer to gobble up still more outlets.

Not so with cable operators. They can merge to their hearts’ content, and raise prices as they please. Not only has giant Cablevision announced a 3.2 percent across-the-board increase for next year, but it keeps changing its package so that you have to pay ever more just to keep the channels you’ve got. We’ll see whether its megacousin Comcast can now get away with that scheme in Groton.

Happily, other towns may be due for some relief as well. The Department of Public Utilities Control has finally ordered SBC/SNET to lease its long shuttered cable network to competitor Gemini. SNET has for years hired the finest lawyers to save those wires for itself. Indeed the power of competition is clearly evident in the vast amounts that such businesses will spend on lawyers, lobbyists, and campaign contributions in order to keep rivals out of the market.

They chafe at regulation, too. SBC is even now lobbying hard to remove its phone service from public control altogether. Cell phone companies would like that too. Lord knows there isn’t much restraint of them now. Their rates, however, are somewhat controlled for the time being. The trouble is that these rates are very complicated and it’s hard to evaluate one competitor against another.

Unfortunately, aside from the happy events in Groton and at SBC, the only cheery note in utility news is that the public finally stood up on its hind legs and said “No” to that FCC’s famous decision last summer. Heavens no, the commission itself didn’t back down from its usual corporate toadying, but Congress, after the public outcry, bestirred itself to override at least part of the edict (no thanks, unfortunately, to Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays). Now because of all the corporate money at stake, that voter rebellion may fail, but the courts at last are beginning to give the FCC a fish eye look, too.

Lamentably, such public arousal is notoriously fickle, with an attention span measured in nanoseconds. For the long run, it’s surely best if towns like Groton bravely grasp the handles of utility power themselves, and change society in a more lasting way than any Congress or set of regulators.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)