CBS and Time Warner: A pox on both their houses.

View 786 Monday, August 12, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barrack Obama, January 31, 2009

Time Warner and CBS are having a dispute over how much Time Warner should pay CBS for the right to put CBS on the cable and thus give CBS access to millions of listeners and thus charge advertisers more. There’s a lot of money involved. CBS is the most watched network so they think they can raise their rates. Time Warner says well, maybe, but not so much, so we aren’t going to carry you any longer until you sober up.  he city council gives cable monopolies in exchange for campaign funds. City Hall looks to see how much it can rake in out of this.  No one give a rap about the viewers. So it goes.

When Cable first started, the Cable companies would receive the over the air broadcasts, and redistribute them saving the listeners the expense of rooftop antennas and in the room rabbit ears. At least at first I don’t think the cable companies paid the TV stations anything, Then for a while came “cable only” networks, and those paid the cable companies.

Sometime in the 1960’s there was an initiative in California that would forbid cable companies to exist. The pitch was that the cable companies were going to eat TV broadcasting and over time free TV would go away, and this needed to be nipped in the bud. The initiative didn’t pass. One reason is lost was that the cable companies assured everyone that they would always have broadcast TV for free.

Only now we don’t. Time Warner isn’t running Channel 2 and another CBS owned station in the LA area. That’s annoying.

It was annoying enough that yesterday I went to Radio Shack and bought what I hoped was a good TV antenna, a Radio Shack brand. Now My expectations weren’t too high, because we never did get good TV reception at Chaos Manor, and we subscribed to cable – Century Cable I think it was – when it first was available. Over the years the name of the company that held a monopoly on cable in my neighborhood changed, and eventually it became Time Warner. They strung new fiber cables and for the first time Chaos Manor had high speed Internet – prior to that we had had a Wi-Fi setup until that company went out of business, then an Amazon direct satellite connection which worked quite well (fast throughput, long latency when it needed to go to a new Internet address, but it worked and I wish I still had it), then finally Time Warner, and it really worked.

I can’t remember if we got reasonably good Channel 2 reception here, because we’ve had cable for so long. Anyway I bought an indoor HD amplifying antenna.

We have a big LG flat screen, and it has an antenna input on the back. I connected the 75 Ohm cable to the antenna and to the set input, and used the LG clicker to choose “antenna” as the input. Naturally that showed nothing but snowflakes. I read both the LG and the Radio Shack manuals. Each basically suggested that I read the other manual. Fooled around, and eventually found a sub menu that offered manual and automatic tuning, and automatic offered to scan for channels, and Lo! it found about 38 broadcast channels. Edit Channel got me a big matrix of what was available. It was confusing. Some channels were designated as a channel number hyphen 1 or 2 or even 3. One was designated as the CBS owned local station that doesn’t do network CBS TV, but which is blanked out by Time Warner. I sent to that. It was on. Every now and then the signal broke up the way digital signals do, but when it was on it was one fine, no ghosts or snow or == well, about the way you’d expect. Bits is bits.

But no Channel 2, which is KCBS TV, which was the point of the exercise. It’s as if KCBS isn’t broadcasting at all. No signal. Not even a lousy one. None.

Which is where I stand. I can get several local broadcast TV stations. I cannot get KNBC (Channel 4) or KCBS (Channel 2). Channel 5 is the lowest number that antenna can see. I do get KABC on Channel 7, so if that major network has a problem with Time Warner I am set.

My alternatives are to look for a better antenna; possibly one I could put on the roof top but realistically I am not going to crawl about on the roof; or to see if The Phone Company now offers DSL to Chaos Manor. Up until the time we got Time Warner Cable, we were too far from the DSL switch by about 2000 feet, and I suspect that hasn’t changed, but perhaps it has; I’ll have to call. If I can get DSL I can tell Time Warner to come pack it in, and I start over, with a DSL Internet access and TV supplier. I’d rather not do that.

I am happy enough with Time Warner except that I can’t get Under the Dome and NCIS. I can live without Under the Dome – I’ve watched about 3 episodes and found only one character I care much about, and the story is getting more complicated, not less. In particular there is apparently no attempt by the people outside the dome to set up big blackboards and establish communication with those inside, and that’s absurd. We don’t know what’s going on outside, but surely someone will be trying to communicate, and no one is. That is a plot device known as an idiot block – the plot fails unless everyone without exception acts like an idiot – and I have always hated that trick.

Time Warner has block Internet access to Internet showings of CBS shows. I am sure they are available on Bit Torrent but I don’t do that. Not yet, anyway.

This week we are doing family things, and none of this is very important. Next week I can look into this with a bit more care.

Suggestions welcome. Of course either Time Warner or CBS may blink by then.