By no you mean yes?

In today's paper, that great customer service organization, Time Warner Cable runs a full page ad in which they perport to engage the power of their millions of customers to help them out of an untenable scrape. Those nasty content provides, the Showtimes and ESPN's,(among others) are again using their "unfair" advantage to force cable companies to accept unreasonably high increases in programming fees.  Time Warner, (consumer champions that they are,) if we're to belive them, have sucked it up, fighting for the consumer's right to enjoy the shows they want with no pass along of costs. But now, alas, they need our help. Help to "fight" the evil empires of content so no subscriber must lose a channel or pay another cent in increased fees.

What they've done is construct a pretty ball-sy (that's a technical term) campaign ostensibly puttling control in the hands of the consumer.  They ask us to make a choice: to "Roll Over" accepting the unreasonable terms and costs offered by the content providers in order to save our shows or "Get Tough."  They've democratically left the choice up to us, except, turns out, there is no choice and what Time Warner has done is signal, in advance, their intent to stick it to the content providers (and us.) all the while preserving their profit margins. So when popular content disappears, by voting to "Get Tough" we have given away our right (or moral high ground) to ask the cable companies to scrutinize their operations to provide adequate value for price to us, the consumer. 

This campaign is just plain brilliant (if disengenuous.) It creates an almost Faustian bargain between the consumer and the cable company where we, apparently, have a choice in how they, our valient advocates go to market on our behalf.  When we visit their "opinion gathering site" at www.rolloverorgettough.com we are given two choices. Now, I, your average red blooded don't-mess-with-me consumer, naturally, clicked "Get Tough" where I was given the chance to sign up, in solidarity with  Time Warner. Just for fun, I pushed the other button, "Roll Over" (which felt like asking someone to poke me with sticks,)  and learned, again, why we're all getting screwed. I had two, no, three opportunities to change my mind and fight.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this clever PR gambit. Rather than be blamed (as has happened in the past) for "taking away programming when  costs exceeded desired margins, Time Warner has innoculated themselves with the consumer equivalent of an H1N1 vaccine against what might be legitimate criticism. Don't you remember the last time they got into a pissing match over content? 

Now, to be fair, it's sometimes tough for small cable systems to bargain effectively with the programming sources who sometimes insist on "bundling" a popular channel with a bunch of duds taking up channel slots and racheting up prices. But TIme Warner (witness their massive headquarters on Columbus Circle in NY) is not just a little cable company.  It's a mammoth entertainment conglomerate that owns all of HBO, CNN, Comedy Central, Warner Studios, Hanna-Barbera, over 200 magazine titles and DC Comics not to mention over 100 record labels, AOL, TBS, the Atlanta Braves and World Championship Wrestling.  Who better to negotiate for content then thems who owns much of it?

This whole "consumer subterfuge" raises what for me is a more profound question. Who's regulating these people?  As the telecommunications business has evolved, new ways of delivering content and communications services have aggregated or in some cases disaggregated leaving holes in consumer protection big enough to drive a truck through.

Most cable companies (the ones who also provide your internet and VoiP telephone in many cases) are usually "regulated" by municipalities, yet face little if any competition or meaningful operations supervision. Back in the day, that's why we had Public Utilities Commission oversight: to provide  objective protection for consumers against monopolistic utilities.  And now, what used to be simple aggregators that sluced local and national content over wires into our homes are now diversified multinational corporations with tremendous leverage and a whole different business model attempting to oversimplify their so-called untenable costs of doing business while taking advantage of consumer good will.  

They ought to be ashamed of themselves.  And so should we if we let them get away with it.

 

Comments

[KRE]

One of the many reasons why years ago I said bye bye, farewell, cya to cable. Switched to satellite and couldn't be happier.