TV task force sends City Council complaints

In a July letter to the Columbia City Council, the Columbia Cable Television Task Force presented its complaints. According to the letter, the task force is dissatisfied with pricing and customer service and that public access, education and government channels are not available to everyone.

"The problem is, the state last year took power from local governments to approve franchising agreements," Fifth Ward Councilwoman Laura Nauser said.

That change in the law limited the city's options for dealing with the complaints. The state is now responsible for regulating the fees the cable companies charge.

Although the city might not be able to do much about the complaints, Second Ward Councilman Jason Thornhill said it is good to know how residents feel, so they can at least be aware of the problems they are faced with.

The task force was assembled in 2003 to deal with problems the community was facing from cable companies MediaCom and Charter Communications, but the group has less power since the law changed.

In its letter to the Council, the task force said it hoped the city would send out a news release explaining why Columbia can't fix the situation. The task force asked the City Council to urge residents to contact the state and voice their dissatisfaction.

"(The task force) recommends that citizens contact their legislators about the situation and consider another source of television," task force member Marty Riback said in the letter.

Nauser said that the most effective thing Columbia residents can do is to file complaints with the Missouri Public Service Commission -- the state agency that regulates cable television companies.

"All we can do for the unhappy citizens is redirect them to the state," Nauser said. "Hopefully, if enough people complain, the state can do something about it."

Mediacom and Charter Communications did not respond to a request for comment by publication. Mediacom's Vice-President of Legal and Public Affairs Tom Larsen said Mediacom is aware of the problems. He doesn't see the letter as a list of complaints for his company, though.

"They are simply expressing their frustration with the change in law," he said.

Larsen said channel owners set the pricing and there is nothing the cable company can do about that.

"Viacom, owners of MTV and other popular channels set the prices for their broadcast," he said. "We simply resell a product."

The overall choice of programming was another issue the task force identified.

"Content is chosen by companies like Viacom," Larsen said. "We have been pushing to get more digital content in HD because that is where television is heading."

Mediacom has plans to assess the complaints. It is in the process of getting the system to handle more HD. The entire system has been under upgrade for the past year, and Larsen said that is what caused many of the outages.

"I sympathize with the customers," Larsen said. "We understand their frustration with the outages, but the customer has to understand that we are doing this to make the service better as a whole."

The yearlong revamping of the system is scheduled to finish sometime next week.