Cable Television

CHICAGO -- In the marketplace for meals, the government lets restaurants decide the best way to do business. Most establishments let you select from a menu. Some feature fixed-price buffets. Both have their patrons. But now some important people in Washington are proposing a federal ban on buffets, though not in the realm of food. The smorgasbords they have in mind consist of bundles of television networks offered to viewers. If you subscribe to cable TV, you generally select from a handful of programming packages, rather than ordering individual stations, and then watch (or surf)

The Community Media Center of Carroll County hosted its 15th Vollies Award Ceremony on Friday at the Carroll County Arts Center. The event celebrates the TV productions of a broad range of volunteers from the past year at the community cable channels. Winners were: Best Performance Program: subKulture, Anastasia Blink. Best Programming for or by Youth: Facts, Fiction & Hope: Solutions & Supports, Carroll County Health Department. Best Talk Interview Program: It's Your Carroll County, Audrey Cimino.

WASHINGTON -- As Americans watched the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, this year, we enjoyed the acrobatics of world-class athletes. But back in Washington, a supposedly expert government agency was engaged in a less-inspiring kind of acrobatics - a flip-flop that could lead to higher cable television bills for consumers and less opportunity for television programmers. The less-than-elegant back flip was a highly questionable effort by the Federal Communications Commission, which reversed itself in a report that endorses a new federal regulation that would allow cable television viewers to be charged on a per-channel basis.

The Columbia Association's cable television program, Columbia Matters, will focus this month on the Harper's Choice village. The show is the second in a series on the features, history and people of Columbia's 10 villages. Barbara Kellner, manager of the Columbia Archives, is host. Her guests are Village Board Chair Phil Wright and Jackie Rose, chair of the Harper's Choice Elections Committee. The show airs on Howard Community College's station, channel 71, at 11 a.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Mondays and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays.

Cherise Tasker is less than enamored with her cable television provider. When she calls with a problem, she said, she often is placed on hold for more than half an hour. For months, certain channels have flickered at random from color to black-and-white, and the sound and moving mouths haven't matched. For these indignities along with Internet services, she pays her cable company nearly $125 a month. "They say they don't know what's causing the problem and they don't know when they can fix it," said Tasker, 41, a Columbia resident.

Howard County residents will be the first in Maryland to have a choice between Comcast and telecommunications giant Verizon for cable television services after a unanimous vote by the Howard County Council last night to grant Verizon a local cable franchise. The council also voted, 3-2, to approve a ban on smoking in all Howard County bars and restaurants -- in four years. County Executive James N. Robey has vowed to veto the bill as too lax. A majority coalition led by council Chairman Christopher J. Merdon, an Ellicott City Republican and candidate for county executive, refused to allow a vote on a more restrictive bill that Robey had sponsored calling for a two-year enforcement delay.

The new film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is one of the least necessary artistic projects of 2005. There have been so many. And unlike the last one (Bridget Jones's Diary, just four years ago), the new version is largely faithful to the novel and to earlier film versions. It breaks no new ground, adds nothing. I enjoyed it a lot. Jane Austen's famous opening sentence ("It is a truth universally acknowledged") is intended to flatter the reader with feelings of worldly superiority to the claustrophobic society she writes about.

The nation's newspapers, including The Sun, posted another six-month period of circulation declines as the industry continues to grapple with competition from the Internet, cable television and other forms of media. Average weekday circulation at 789 newspapers fell 2.6 percent for the six-month period that ended Sept. 30, according to a report released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations and analyzed by the Newspaper Association of America, a trade group in Northern Virginia. Average Sunday circulation at 627 papers analyzed fell by 3.1 percent.

Accusing Time Warner Inc. of moving too slowly to improve its sluggish share price, billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn yesterday urged the world's largest entertainment company to separate its cable business from its entertainment properties and repurchase $20 billion worth of its stock. But many investors questioned whether a sale or spinoff of the company's cable business would improve the entertainment giant's value. While they welcome a bigger stock buyback, analysts said, it's not the best time to sell or spin off cable systems that have been trading at historic lows because of concerns about the heated rivalry with phone and satellite competitors.

NEW YORK - Owning Liberty Media Corp. has always been about owning a piece of John C. Malone. As a leading cable TV mogul, the cunning and charismatic Malone can usually be expected to do something daring - and profitable. But for the past four years, Liberty Media's chairman, chief executive and all-around guru has been unable to move his stock much above the low double-digits. It touched $25 before the Internet bubble burst in March 2000. So today, Malone will try to do what many media owners are trying to do these days: "unlock" value from his holdings, by spinning off Liberty's 50 percent stake in Discovery Communications Inc., the Silver Spring, Md. company that is one of the world's most treasured cable-TV properties.