Public access channels are about to get a little less publicly accessible. In flipping through the channels this morning, I noticed that on the five cable public access channels (15-19) there was a banner along the lower part of the screen telling us about another one of Comcast’s brilliant moves.
Starting in January Comcast is moving all of the public access channels to the 900 section on its digital cable offerings. That means that in order to watch the local meetings (often only Ann Arbor city council and boards, but still good tv) and the quite good local shows (like my favorite with the guy who reviews records with a talking plastic lobster) one must purchase digital cable and their digital cable box. I’m not sure about the numbers, but I’m guessing that a majority of the people who watch the public access channels are just getting the basic $12 cable package, and aren’t interested in the $50-75 increase a month for the bells and whistles of digital cable and the ‘on-demand’ stuff.
Comcast is offering to supply the digital box for free for the first year, but after 2008 everyone would have to shell out the big bucks just to watch their local meetings and community shows.
For those of you who are keeping track, this is Comcast’s third massive consumer piss-off maneuver, with the first being the change of “customer service” locations to include bulletproof glass and tighter security than banks, and the second screwup being the whole fiasco with not including the Big Ten Network (I’m surprised Ann Arbor hasn’t just started their own cable services, with all the crap they’ve had to put up with).
Just another reasons to support public television and radio – so that Comcast won’t control it.
