Cable Tv

UPDATES WITH LINK TO RESPONSE POST BY GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: After watching coverage of the Wisconsin recall, I am convinced more than ever that it's time for a major press gut check. We have been in real trouble for a long time with cable TV news, but we truly have reached a new low of partisanship at MSNBC and Fox News -- and confusion at CNN. It's the confusion part at CNN that has me truly worried these days. Monday night after watching cable TV, I wrote about being "dismayed" by the polarized place that MSNBC and Fox News had come to. Scott Walker, the Republican governor, wouldn't talk to MSNBC, and Tom Barrett, the Democratic challenger, wouldn't come on Fox. Who could blame them?

One of the driving principles in the live and late-breaking world of TV news is to just keep moving on. Don't dwell too long on yesterday's mistakes, or you'll miss today's big story. But the mistakes made by social media and cable TV after the Boston Marathon bombings have continued reverberating - culminating, perhaps, in the discovery last week of the body of a young man falsely accused of being a suspect. We saw similar patterns after the Newtown shooting, and we need to look at this trend before the media get any further out of control.

In an ordinary residential neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., the future of cable television will officially go on-line today. That's when the Time Warner New York City Cable Group will hook up the first subscriber to receive the nation's only 150-channel cable-TV system."

When Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. completes three deals announced in the past two months, it will own more television stations across the country than any other company. The Hunt Valley company will operate 134 stations in 69 markets, reaching more than a third of all U.S. homes with televisions. It will have more than doubled in size in about two years, and that's presuming it doesn't broker any more acquisitions. It still won't own stations in megamarkets such as New York or Los Angeles, but that's part of its strategy.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a financial blow to the pay-TV industry, ruling that states and cities do not violate the First Amendment when they tax cable television but exempt print media.Voting 7-2, the justices yesterday upheld an Arkansas tax that, by one estimate, means more than $4 million a year for state coffers from cable TV services.The court said the tax, which applies to a variety of services, from utilities to concert tickets, is constitutional because it is not based on the content of cable programming and does not burden only a small group of taxpayers.

After months of complaining that the cable television operators have been getting away with murder in their pricing policies, the industry's critics in Congress have been handed what they call a "smoking gun."In a memo in August, a top executive of Tele-Communications Inc. told local managers to ignore customers' objections and jack up rates on various cable television services before a new cable TV regulation law went into effect."The best news of all is we can blame it on the government now. Let's take advantage of it!"

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a financial blow to the pay-TV industry, ruling that states and cities do not violate the First Amendment when they tax cable television but exempt print media.Voting 7-2, the justices yesterday upheld an Arkansas tax that, by one estimate, means more than $4 million a year for state coffers from cable TV services.The court said the tax, which applies to a variety of services, from utilities to concert tickets, is constitutional because it is not based on the content of cable programming and does not burden only a small group of taxpayers.

In another sign of the accelerating clash between the telephone and cable television industries, Bell Atlantic Corp. announced yesterday that it would team with a small New Jersey company to provide 60 channels of television over new high-capacity lines to 38,000 homes in Dover Township, N.J.The venture will be the first in which a telephone company hascompeted head-to-head against a cable TV service. The deal comes as the biggest cable companies begin to install technology that allows them to provide a much broader array of information and entertainment.

CHICAGO -- The phone rang, and when I picked it up, a man said, "How do I get cable TV?" This happens all the time. I told him whom to call, then I asked, as I do all the time, why he wanted cable."

From live appearances by Karen Valentine and Don Knotts to televised ones of the old "Password" game show and classic sports moments, nostalgia met high tech yesterday at the Baltimore Convention Center, site of a three-day gathering of the cable television industry.No doubt, few TV viewers in the days of "Room 222," and "The Andy Griffith Show" ever imagined the array of programs and channels served up by today's cable TV -- a forum for shopping, choosing movies, checking the weather. Perhaps even fewer guessed at consumer interest in oldies -- both television and film.

Dr. Ben Carson got a tough lesson in the past week on how quickly the angry and divisive world of cable TV can chew you up. The 61-year-old Baltimore County resident has been in the media spotlight as a darling of the right since early February, when he addressed the National Prayer Breakfast with what some interpreted as a lecture to President Barack Obama. But last week, Carson's TV image and the discussion about him shifted dramatically - for the worse. He became engaged in a TV discussion on race that included back-and-forth name calling - and he offered a critique on same-sex marriage that included such extreme rhetoric that he now has Johns Hopkins colleagues calling him out and medical students petitioning to have him removed as a graduation speaker in May. Most of it played out before millions on highly partisan Fox News, where he has recently been treated like a member of the home team.

UPDATES with reaction to the film from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's office... Using digitalmedia once again to end run the cable TV industry, Al Jazeera English posted its latest documentary, "Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City," online Tuesday morning. The film will premiere on the channel at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, with multiple plays throughout the week. I believe it's outrageous that cable TV operators have kept the channel off its systems in cities like Baltimore, despite stellar coverage of major stories in the Middle East and endorsements ranging from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the leading academic experts and authors on global media.

UPDATES WITH LINK TO RESPONSE POST BY GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: After watching coverage of the Wisconsin recall, I am convinced more than ever that it's time for a major press gut check. We have been in real trouble for a long time with cable TV news, but we truly have reached a new low of partisanship at MSNBC and Fox News -- and confusion at CNN. It's the confusion part at CNN that has me truly worried these days. Monday night after watching cable TV, I wrote about being "dismayed" by the polarized place that MSNBC and Fox News had come to. Scott Walker, the Republican governor, wouldn't talk to MSNBC, and Tom Barrett, the Democratic challenger, wouldn't come on Fox. Who could blame them?

I went to church on CNN Saturday, and it was one of the most powerful, uplifting and spiritual experiences I've had in years. Yes, watching six hours of cable TV coverage of Whitney Houston's funeral was a spiritual experience, and I am not using that word carelessly. It was profound and elevating, and the way in which media bring us together for such experiences makes up for one hell of a lot of cable TV's daily sins. CNN certainly wasn't the only cable channel with wall-to-wall coverage.

Conservative analyst Pat Buchanan Thursday night confirmed what some in the worlds of politics and cable TV believed to be true for months: He hadn't just been suspended by MSNBC in the wake of his latest controversial book, he was through and would never be back on the cable channel again. “My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end,” Buchanan wrote Thursday in a post at The American Conservative. “After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.” Buchanan had been suspended since shortly after the October publication of his book, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

Anderson Cooper's "AC360" show found itself in the middle of the Casey Anthony trial drama this week when the Anthony family attorney told CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman that George and Cindy Anthony, the parents of Casey, did not think their daughter was innocent. After suggesting yesterday that his remarks had been taken out of context, attorney Mark Lippman came on "AC360" last night in what he described as an attempt to clarify his remarks. I think cable TV -- even at the most responsible end of the spectrum -- is a tricky place for attorneys to be making statements about guilt and innocence.

The state fire marshal's office is investigating the explosions of three pipe bombs last night in Hampstead, Carroll County.Deputy Fire Marshal Robert Thomas said the devices were placed in a cable television junction box and two mail boxes. No one was injured.The first bomb went off about 10 p.m. in the junction box belonging to Prestige Cable TV in the first block of Fairmount Road.A company spokeswoman said today about 400 customers lost service. She could not estimate when service would be restored.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, in a ruling that potentially could add to the rising costs of cable television service, ruled yesterday that states have the constitutional power to require cable TV to pay taxes that other parts of the media do not have to pay.The cable industry, already under federal investigation over sharply rising rates charged to customers in recent years, indicated that any taxes imposed on cable operators will simply be passed on...

To clumsily paraphrase America's great lyricist: "What is this thing called Beck? This funny thing called Beck? Just who can solve his mystery? Why should he make a fool of me?" Those clever words, together with Cole Porter's haunting 1930 tune, keep running through my mind as I contemplate the bizarre rally of commentator/celebrity/preacher Glenn Beck at the Lincoln Memorial the other day. Beyond the argument over how many people flocked around the reflecting pool and beyond for the event — from 87,000, as guesstimated from an aerial photo, to half a million or more by Beck enthusiasts — what was the Saturday rally all about?