Sunday, August 19th, 2007...4:07 pm
Sauce for the Goose Department
A while back, in an effort to avoid having to deal with the City of Tucson’s cable regulations, Cox cable sent out e-mails to customers asking for them to contact the state legislature to allow the poor, beset, put upon pobres at Cox to lower cable rates so that Tucson families would no longer have to decide between macaroni and cheese and Meerkat Manor.
They sent out e-mails containing a link, and this link supposedly would send an e-mail to legislators demanding that they lower cable rates. The link did something very different, as it generated an e-mail asking for legislators to support getting rid of cable regulations entirely. In essence, supporting a bill allowing them to raise their rates willy nilly.
Well, horror of horrors, someone is now trying a similiar effort, but this time aimed at Cox Cable:
Good afternoon everyone!
You may be receiving a form e-mail regarding carriage of NFL games by cable companies.
The NFL Network has launched a nationwide grassroots campaign to try and get NFL fans to contact their legislators to ask them to force cable companies to carry its channel. This issue is creating some confusion and has prompted a number of inquiries from some of you to my office. I want to clarify that Cox DOES carry the NFL network in most of our Arizona market, as do a number of other cable operators around the country. This is not a legislative issue, but rather an attempt by the NFL Network to pressure certain cable providers across the country to acquiesce to their contract demands for carriage of their channel in a specific channel location as well as other financial concessions. It would not be a surprise to you that the costs for cable operators to carry sports programming are very high and excessive demands by sports networks have forced cable companies across the country to create tiers of service for sports programming to allow sports fans to get the sports programming they want without forcing all basic cable customers to pay the excessive costs for this programming For example, Cox has an agreement with the NFL Network to carry the channel on Cox’s Sports and Information Tier. The Sports and Information Tier costs no more than $5.00 per month and includes the NFL Network and 11 other sports channels, including 3 ESPN channels, 4 Fox Sports channels, and NBA TV.
Cox is proud to offer our customers over 125 NFL games this season in digital and High Definition.
I hope this helps clarify any confusion that the NFL Network’s email campaign may have caused. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Have a great weekend!
Susan Anable, Director of Public Affairs
Cox Communications
Gosh, some corporate entity is generating an astroturf campaign (and probably the most appropriate group to do an astroturf campaign at that) to promote a narrow agenda that only benefits their bottom line? Hoodathunkit?
Even if it is the sport of pointyball that they are up against here, it is difficult for me to generate anything resembling sympathy for the folks at Cox on this one.
4 Comments
August 20th, 2007 at 7:15 am
The cable operators would no doubt like the new network to be a premium channel so as not to be classified and regulated as basic cable programming.
Now this monopoly can charge the consumer higher rates.
Superintendence of the ethical and legal decisions is imperative to balance the much-needed rights of everyone.
Regulators have consistently failed to improve consumer satisfaction within this monopoly cable market.
Regulation alone though, is in no way a substitute for competition.
Just a game of hustle they play in Washington.
Where is Senator John McCain with his passion for free market principles?
August 20th, 2007 at 10:38 am
I got rid of Cox Cable over 6 years ago. Thank God for Dish Network!!!
January 5th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[…] other states they called for state action on behalf of their NFL Network. Yep, these guys were trying to get legislatures to force local cable operators to broadcast their games. Kinda left them without a reason to complain now, didn’t […]
January 5th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[…] other states they called for state action on behalf of their NFL Network. Yep, these guys were trying to get legislatures to force local cable operators to broadcast their games. Kinda left them without a reason to complain now, didn’t […]
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