How Cable Neglects Its ‘Red-Headed Step-Sister

[Commentary] I’ve worked in an obscure media public policy world that only a telecom geek could possibly appreciate. That world is Public, Educational and Government (PEG) access television, or as I say, “the red-headed step sister of television.”

For the entirety of those 17 years, I have watched as members of the cable industry have tried everything they can to destroy PEG access television, to literally wipe it off the face of the earth, all the while claiming with bravado they mean no such thing and they mean no harm. In an email from a Time Warner Cable government relations employee to a City Councilman in a Western state, the employee told the councilman not to support legislation that American Community Television has been working on for five years, The Community Access Preservation Act (CAP Act), which would preserve and protect PEG access television. In the email, the TWC employee said PEG support drives up prices, and satellite doesn’t have to provide PEG support, therefore PEG stifles innovation, growth and competition. Never mind that that’s a bald faced lie, it was yet another assault by the cable industry on democracy, free speech and government transparency. Our charge to the cable industry is, stop lying and come up with hard, cold evidence that PEG causes any of the harms you claim it does. (You won’t, because you can’t.)

[Bunnie Riedel is Executive Director of American Community Television]