Back in the Stone Age, when I was a kid, I was told
quite explicitly that lying was bad.
This was further reinforced by my Sunday School teacher and my Girl
Scout leader. It was made clear that if
you did something wrong, you should still tell the truth, even if that truth
had consequences. In the end, they said,
you will be a better person for it.
Imagine my surprise as an adult when I first heard
the phrase “Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” I’ve never liked that philosophy; I’ve just
always felt it was better to be up front, to be honest about your intentions.
A wee bit later in life I learned: there is truth,
there are lies and then there are legal binding contracts and frequently these
things never do cross paths and more often than not, the legal binding contract
trumps everything else.
The only way I know how to get out of a contract is
to prove you were mentally incapable or incompetent when you signed it.
Which brings me to my subject.
Charter Communications signed a legal binding
contract with the Town of Northbridge, Massachusetts in the spring of
2013. The contract detailed how Charter would
conduct its business in the Town, to include the provision of Public,
Educational and Government (PEG) access television channels, support for those channels
and their placement on the cable system.
The contract clearly (and I mean that in the most Linguaphile
interpretation of the word “clearly”), states the following:
“The Licensee shall continue to make available
to the Town and/or the Access Designee three (3) full-time Downstream Channels
for PEG Access purposes on channels 11, 12, and 13.”
Yet, some eighteen months later, Charter has slammed
those Northbridge PEG channels to 191, 192 and 194. To add further insult, the Charter government
relations person said “I personally messed up in terms of the license we had
with Northbridge.” And went on to let
the good Selectmen of Northbridge know that Charter would not be moving the PEG
channels back to their contractually binding position any time soon, meaning
never.
We can speculate, fairy accurately, that when Charter
signed that contract in 2013 it was already in the midst of making its digital
transition plan, and it knew that they would slam the PEG channels to the
higher placement, but they signed the contract anyway. I am not sure if this was just lying or that
asking for forgiveness later deal. But I
am pretty dog-gone positive the contract trumps whatever devious intentions or
model business plan Charter may have had.
One could venture that should the contract come
under some kind of judicial review, Charter’s only hope is to plead mental
defect or insanity. I, myself, would be perfectly willing to testify to the
findings of such a plea.
From a purely analytical point of view, what could
explain Charter’s decision in Missouri a few years ago to pull free cable drops
to police departments and fire stations?
Sure, the statewide franchising law didn’t require these drops the way
the local franchises had done previously, but why treat first responders with such
disdain, knowing the company would make itself look churlish and it would garner
bad publicity?
Mental defect? Insanity perhaps?
Why on earth would a company slam PEG channels in
Missouri and Wisconsin to the 900’s? Why
would they slam community channels full of church services and school board
meetings and the Rotary Club to what I am told is the “Porn Neighborhood”? (I wouldn’t know, I don’t “do” porn).
Mental defect?
Insanity perhaps?
And then, why would a company march into a perfectly
good school district in Montana and tell them they had to rent cable boxes at
$6.99 a month for every television set in the district if they wanted to get
cable? A rate, mind you, that would cost
the school district $60k to $80k per year.
This behavior is further proof of something going on when Charter knows
all it had to do was provide DTA’s to the school district at very little cost
and that would have solved the problem.
Mental defect?
Insanity? Out of control
hormones? Bad Sushi?
The phenomenon that is Charter Communications never
does cease to amaze me, and not long ago I could shake my head and laugh it
off, but with Charter poised to be the second largest cable operator in the
country, it’s no longer a laughing matter.
Little old Northbridge, Massachusetts is not the
only community this is happening in, add to them Worcester, Uxbridge and
Douglas, to name a few.
Meanwhile, it would be very hard to claim a mental hiccup
whilst the ink was drying on the legal binding contract given in Northbridge
the PEG channel positions are now occupied by QVC, Telemundo and the NFL
Network. Those lower channel numbers,
which the Charter representative allowed really are not very important, seem to
be occupied by at least two pretty important revenue generating
programmers.
And that, at the end of the day, is the point. For the bottom line, cable operators will do
what they have to do, contracts be damned.
It does remain disturbing that after they’ve done it, they’re not even
willing to ask for forgiveness.
To see the Northbridge Selectmen's hearing on the issue go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZdhea-vigI&feature=youtu.be
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