CABLE BOARD NEARS END OF DATA GATHERING STAGE

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- The Cable Television Citizens Committee has nearly completed the first phase of its work to review the city's franchise agreement with TCI Cablevision, the local cable television operator.

At its meeting Wednesday, committee Chairman Michael Maguire said the "information gathering" phase of the committee's work will conclude with a public hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.

Committee members have surveyed community leaders as to their opinions and concerns about local cable TV service, and the results of a cable service newspaper survey recently were compiled.

The newspaper survey asked readers five questions related to cable TV service in Cape Girardeau. Committee member Miki Gudermuth said 99 surveys were returned with the following results:

61 respondents were satisfied with the quality of TCI's signal reception; 33 were dissatisfied.

52 respondents were satisfied with TCI's customers service; 38 were dissatisfied.

27 respondents said they thought TCI responded adequately to complaints and resolved service problems; 28 said they were dissatisfied with the way problems were resolved; and 32 said they hadn't had any problems.

73 respondents said they thought it was important for the local cable access channel to broadcast City Council and school board meetings; 16 said the programming wasn't important.

60 respondents said they would like to see other types of community programming on the local access channel; 28 were satisfied with current programming.

Gudermuth said that not all respondents answered all the questions and that some answered with both "yes" and "no" answers.

At its next meeting, March 26, the committee will organize a telephone survey to garner further public opinions concerning cable TV service here, Maguire said.

Maguire also told the committee Wednesday that a revised version of a cable re-regulation bill has been reintroduced in Congress. A similar measure last year failed.

He said there are provisions in the new proposal that would allow municipalities to regulate rates for some levels of basic cable programming.

But Roger Harms, president of TCI's Cape Girardeau system, said the committee should be wary of legislation that could hinder growth of the cable TV industry.

"Any time you talk about rate regulation, you're going to affect (Cable News Network), C-Span, Discovery Channel," Harms said. "Those channels are the direct result of rates and were started by the cable industry.

"We're taking so much of the subscribers' rates and putting it back into programming. CNN's coverage of the war (in the Persian Gulf) could not have come about without the cable companies putting that money into programming."

Harms said that because advertising revenues aren't sufficient to fund programming for channels like CNN, C-Span and Discovery, the cable industry heavily subsidizes those programs.

"I just think you've got to be careful with a bill like this," Harms said. "Do you regulate an industry where every day the technology is growing by leaps and bounds?"