Comcast public forum
The Comcast Public Forum arranged by Mayor Dan Rivera for the purpose of discussing the cable contract, took place at the Senior Center on July 8th.
According to his press release, “During the meeting, residents will be asked to weigh in on the license agreement and past performance based on the current license that is set to expire November, 2014. Residents are also asked to consider their future needs and interests regarding Comcast service.”
To our dismay, we had to seat through another presentation of the Wonderful World of Lawrence Community Access Television (LCAT). Jim Ross explained what the PEG channels are (Public, Education and Public) and how to read the cable bill pointing out the monthly charge we all pay for maintaining his stations (the Government and Public Access channels) as well as the School Department’s Educational channel.
The audience, made up of about 25, was mostly employees of LCAT, the mayor’s office, David Pekarsky from the school Department and from the interested residents perhaps 10 or 12 people.
The only mention of the Comcast contract was that it would be for another ten years and the only intelligent questions came from Bill Collins and Nunzio DiMarca. They had to do with reception quality and trainings available because many residents claim having called their office and are promised a call back when it is scheduled which never happens.
LCAT’s response was that people may say that but they don’t show up for the sessions. I insisted that there’s no effort on their part to announce upcoming dates because it is not made public through radio or newspapers. They are listed on their screen (channel 8 on Comcast and channel 40 on Verizon) but if people are not in the habit of watching LCAT, they’ll never know it. The main reason for not having local productions is the lack of trained volunteers.
When mentioning the quality of local programs, I questioned why everything is in black and white and Mr. Ross explained that by the time the video goes out to the I-net and returns to each home, it is distorted. The public doesn’t understand those technical problems; they want to see colors!
When Jim said that today’s technology has advanced so much that cell phones have good enough quality for television production it explained a lot! I refuse using cell phone pictures in Rumbo but they obviously don’t take quality into consideration!
For those with Verizon, their system allows us to watch the PEG channels in surrounding cities and towns. Take the time to check them out and you’ll see what a difference they offer. Not only the colors and audio but the public messages on the screen are very legible. In Lawrence they save time and effort by not retyping them and scan original documents in the small font they were typed which cannot be read.
Regarding technology, I explained how fast it is advancing all over the world with companies like Google Fiber, AT&T, RCN, Gig.net, Cisco Cable, etc. developing better and faster systems than we currently use. The problem is that they would cost $400 per month and they are certain that in three to five years the cost will be competitive. So, why get stuck now with an inferior service in a ten-year contract?
Ronnie Martin asked a very important question regarding a-la-cart programming. At present, we get packages containing many channels that we are not interested in. How about buying only those we want to watch?
Towards the end of the meeting Bill Collins said that we should have had a Comcast representative at the meeting. The lady in front of him turned around and said she was Jane Lyman from Comcast. She was not introduced at all.
This public forum was a farce to pretend that Mayor Rivera is doing something about it. Since last summer I have been insisting on the importance of appointing the Cable Advisory Commission that was dissolved in 2004 when LCAT was formed by Mayor Michael Sullivan in secret and he appointed Jim Ross its president.
As I was leaving, Ginny Alexander, the station manager, offered me to come back and produce the two shows I used to do. I would not accept because this is not about Dalia. This is about an entire community that is being deprived of a service we are paying for and I continue to insist that this is a conscious effort to keep Lawrencians ignorant.
Alternatives to cable
For anyone who wishes to save money, there are things you can do. You can buy an antenna ($25 to $100) which will allow you to receive all the stations in the area (Boston and New Hampshire) for free. With the advent of cable, stations stopped sending their images over the air but the FCC ruled that they had to continue that practice and the picture is equal to that of HD TV.
Go to Antenna.org and you’ll learn a great deal about indoors and outdoors antennas. They claim that you can get approximately 75 channels in the cities and over 30 channels in urban areas in 150 miles.
Another option is Hulu.com and all the programs recently seen on television will be found there and Netflix.com will give you movies and TV shows for as little as $7.99 each month. You can plug the computer to any TV set and watch like a big spender.
For the purpose of watching older programs or even recent ones a couple of days after they appear on cable, you can go to YouTube.com or the networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, etc.) and find them there. And you watch the Lawrence City Council meetings you won’t have to miss them: you can watch them through YouTube.
You may even watch your favorite soap operas or novellas by going directly to Univision or Telemundo.
If you are already paying for cell phone service and have a Droid phone and if you have unlimited web access on the phone, you can use the phone as the internet provider for your home computer and no additional internet provider is needed. Everything is provided through the cell phone carrier.
There are ways to save money if you are willing to forfeit a little convenience.
We don’t have to be hooked to an expensive cable system getting hundreds of channels of no interest to us.
