We had community cable TV as part of our municipally owned Alameda Municipal Power. I live in a Alameda, California, a city of about 75,000 on an island in San Francisco Bay.
Addition of the cable service was voted by the citizens, a pitched campaign between socialism and capitalism - or so we were told. There were many people campaigning door to door for and against. Comcast hired technically clueless shills to canvas from outside the city. I and other tech savvy neighbors evangelized pro bono.
For a number of reasons as the cable infrastructure was being build out the services was squeezed out of business by Comcast and then sold to Comcast at a financial loss. The system was mismanaged, our power management was incompetent at telecom, Goldman Sachs was involved in the municipal bond process - and you can guess what happened with that, and litigation followed albeit not as badly as it could have been.
The key to success for this proposal is that cities need expertise to help guide them or they'll be scammed by both sides.
I build tech startups in highly regulated industries such as finance, patent litigation, health care, but those the TV and cable industry is very successful at buying votes. When one reads the history of cable you realize it's always been a monopoly dependent creating artificial barriers to entry. Buying local council members is cheap. Get enough of those and you can buy some US Senators to control the law and some movie studios to control the content distribution rules.
A BIT MORE BACKGROUND
It's been perhaps 8 years, so my memory is poor, but IIRC our local problem was AMP or AMTP (telecom) could not obtain rights to content due to a conflict with licensing authorities. In plain language, the cable giants made a deal with the movie studios and networks that did not permit one geographic area to be supplied by 2 competitors. A satellite provider could compete with cable or telephone, but not 2 telephone, or 2 cable or 2 satellite. This provides for a monopoly.
AMP had hundreds of digital channels with new technology with literally nothing on them. Comcast had 31 analog channels on old analog lines, but they had a lock on the favorite content such as ESPN. No content, no subscribers. (My memory is weak on some of these, but content was a major bone of contention for neighbors deciding not to switch service.)
Our desire was for fast internet first and cheap TV shows a distant second. AMP delivered.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by notcaptainkirk.
A bit later, but better than never
Addition of the cable service was voted by the citizens, a pitched campaign between socialism and capitalism - or so we were told. There were many people campaigning door to door for and against. Comcast hired technically clueless shills to canvas from outside the city. I and other tech savvy neighbors evangelized pro bono.
For a number of reasons as the cable infrastructure was being build out the services was squeezed out of business by Comcast and then sold to Comcast at a financial loss. The system was mismanaged, our power management was incompetent at telecom, Goldman Sachs was involved in the municipal bond process - and you can guess what happened with that, and litigation followed albeit not as badly as it could have been.
The key to success for this proposal is that cities need expertise to help guide them or they'll be scammed by both sides.
I build tech startups in highly regulated industries such as finance, patent litigation, health care, but those the TV and cable industry is very successful at buying votes. When one reads the history of cable you realize it's always been a monopoly dependent creating artificial barriers to entry. Buying local council members is cheap. Get enough of those and you can buy some US Senators to control the law and some movie studios to control the content distribution rules.
A BIT MORE BACKGROUND
It's been perhaps 8 years, so my memory is poor, but IIRC our local problem was AMP or AMTP (telecom) could not obtain rights to content due to a conflict with licensing authorities. In plain language, the cable giants made a deal with the movie studios and networks that did not permit one geographic area to be supplied by 2 competitors. A satellite provider could compete with cable or telephone, but not 2 telephone, or 2 cable or 2 satellite. This provides for a monopoly.
AMP had hundreds of digital channels with new technology with literally nothing on them. Comcast had 31 analog channels on old analog lines, but they had a lock on the favorite content such as ESPN. No content, no subscribers. (My memory is weak on some of these, but content was a major bone of contention for neighbors deciding not to switch service.)
Our desire was for fast internet first and cheap TV shows a distant second. AMP delivered.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by notcaptainkirk.
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