Cable

Tuesday's storm took out my cable. I realize that thousands of metropolitan-area residents lost power completely as severe thunderstorms swept through. Streets were flooded. Whirling winds knocked down buildings and ripped the shingles off rooftops. Hundreds of people fled their homes. A fire official told reporters, "It's a miracle no one got hurt."The loss of cable can't compare with those tragedies. And yet . . . I came home. I turned on my television. And the screen was blank."The storm!"

A 1993 incident in which more than 20 black employees of Baltimore's cable television system were herded into a room for interrogation by white investigators in the presence of armed guards is at the center of a series of lawsuits filed yesterday against Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable operator.The incident took place on the same day the black president of United Artists Cable of Baltimore was at TCI's office in Bethesda being fired by his white supervisor.These two incidents, coupled with other recent dismissals or demotions of blacks at other TCI properties, led to the filing yesterday of three lawsuits against the giant cable television operator seeking damages estimated at more than $1 billion.

Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN, by Scott Collins. Portfolio. 256 pages. $24.95. Let's give away the not-so-secret ending up front: The Fox News Channel is a ratings hit because it reflects the singular vision of Roger Ailes, its CEO and chairman. Integrating quickly paced reports with opinion-heavy programming, Ailes serves a market populated by those disaffected by the so-called "liberal media elite" -- that shadowy quarry conjured up and denounced by such major-league Republicans as former Presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush.

ON AND OFF THE AIR:* A generation of youngsters will not know Ringo Starr first as one of The Beatles, but as an engagingly accented storyteller.For two seasons, Starr was the original Mr. Conductor of the PBS series "Shining Time Station," but was replaced this season by George Carlin. Now he's back telling tales tonight in a new cable series for young children, "Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories."The animated show premieres at 7:30 on the Showtime premium cable service, and Starr narrates "Elbert's Bad Word," the first of two stories in the half-hour.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- At a hotel in Orlando this week, executives in the cable television industry have nearly been salivating over these three initials: PPV.That's an abbreviation for pay-per-view, a technology whose time has come, especially for sports, cable experts say.The cable honchos, in Orlando for an industry convention, maintain they have reason to be wringing their hands in anticipation of uncovering a golden goose. They feel they will be able to take in millions of dollars from charging viewers for events that in many cases previously were shown on free TV.Only time will tell, because PPV technology still is too new to judge.

NEW YORK - Earlier this month, executives at the MSNBC cable news network canceled Phil Donahue's 6-month-old talk show, a level-headed panel program that the pacifist host had hoped would "break through the noisy drums of war on cable." In its place, the network simply tacked an extra hour onto its popular Countdown: Iraq, a nightly report that breathlessly awaits the first Baghdad bombings. Once again, the lucrative business of war trumped the boring business of peace. MSNBC's cancellation of Mr. Donahue - and the simultaneous ascendancy of the man he was hired to beat, Fox News Channel's dyspeptic, conservative talk show host Bill O'Reilly - points to a fever that has finally spiked on the cable news dial.

3/8 TC It wasn't exactly a stinging rebuke that Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke delivered to United Artists Cable of Baltimore last night.At least Coles Ruff, United Artists' general manager, didn't seem at all stung as he grinned and shook hands after the annual meeting of the city's Cable Communications Advisory Commission. What could have turned into a public pillorying over chronic equipment shortages and service fiascoes had turned out to be, at worst, a mild chiding."It's an improvement over last year," Mr. Ruff exulted.

Six weeks remain before the political season officially arrives with the July 5 filing deadline for the primary, but state Sen. Nancy L. Murphy already is using cable television to advertise her bid to become Baltimore County executive.Mrs. Murphy, a Catonsville Democrat, was late in her efforts to raise money and organize. But she was the first candidate for executive to formally announce her intentions in January and now is the first to air television advertisements.None of the other major Democratic executive candidates has produced video commercials, saying it's too soon before the Sept.

So I just received an e-mail from a group called TV4US about Maryland residents paying an average of 6.4 percent more for cable television beginning Saturday. Says TV4US, "the cost of Comcast's standard cable package will go from $55.45 to $59, an increase of 6.4 percent. In some counties, like Montgomery, rates have increased 13.75 percent since January 2007." Comcast disputes those figures. (I'll get to this in a sec.) Comcast is not, however, disputing the fact that your cable bill is going up come Saturday.

SOMETIMES I feel like the blind man trying to describe an elephant. You've probably heard that old Indian parable: four blind men were summoned by Buddha to help settle a dispute among citizens about the nature of God. Buddha's disciples put the four in different spots around an elephant and asked them to describe the animal. One touched the elephant's leg and said the elephant looked like a pillar. The second touched the elephant's belly and said it looked like a wall. The third touched the elephant's ear and said it looked like a piece of cloth.