SOME IN CITY HAVE NEW CHANNEL UPGRADE

Scanning the television selections in Cape Girardeau will take a few more clicks of the remote control for some residents who already have had their cable service upgraded.

Fourteen new channels, including ESPN2, TV Land, The Learning Channel, E! Entertainment TV and Comedy Central, are being added to the cable lineup offered by Charter Communications. (See related box for added channel offerings.)

About half of the city's subscribers already are receiving the new channels, said Roger Harms, general manager for Charter Communications in Cape Girardeau. The remainder of the city and Jackson will be upgraded by year's end.

Crews laying new fiber optic lines have finished work in the central and southern portion of the city. Crews are continuing to work in an area west of Kingshighway and into Jackson, Harms said. That area will be the last phase to get the new channels.

The direction chosen for adding the upgraded lines coincided with work on a new master head-end facility in south Cape Girardeau. The facility will serve as a central center for processing signals from satellite and local television stations and transmitting those signals to local cable customers.

Starting in the south area was the only "feasible way to do the project without interrupting service" for hundreds of customers, Harms said. There are 60 nodes to upgrade and each node, or cable distribution area, serves 500 customers.

Instead of interrupting service for days at a time, customers will be without cable service for about eight hours on a single day while the switch to new lines is made. Crews from Scientific Atlanta are overseeing the work and usually begin at 7 a.m. and try to finish by 3 p.m. so customers have service, Harms added.

"People are wanting us in their area as soon as possible and are anxious for the channels," Harms said.

Customers should have received door-hangers announcing the upgrade and a flyer telling them of the new channels and that the work is complete in their neighborhood. Cable-ready TV sets should be reprogrammed to grab the new channels.

The upgrade also includes a price increase for customers. The added cost will be $6 per month for customers with expanded basic programming.

The additional charge won't be added to customers' bills until they receive the new channels, Harms said. Areas that have just gotten the new channel lineup should notice the increase on next month's bill.

Jim Dufek, chairman of the city's Cable Television Advisory Board, has only heard positive comments about the upgrade. The committee will be working with Charter to complete a customer survey at the beginning of 2001.

"With all the trucks out and crews stringing lines, it's a lot of activity and people are wondering when it's coming to their neighborhoods," Dufek said.

He added that he has been impressed with Charter's zeal to get the project started and finished by December. That energy has been a change from past cable service providers in Cape Girardeau, said Dufek.

The work shows "a long-term commitment" from Charter, he said. "Just look at what they've done in a short amount of time -- it's not just rhetoric."

The new cable channels should fill a request from customers, Harms said. "These are some of the most popular niche programming channels. We are trying to get the channel lineups like everybody else is receiving throughout the country."

Charter Communications operates cable television, digital video programming and high-speed Internet access to 6.2 million customers. The company has headquarters in St. Louis.

At the end of the year, Charter and the city will conduct a survey of customers to see what the reaction is to the new channels. Some members of the city cable committee had asked for the survey to be completed before all the work was done. The Cape Girardeau City Council decided to delay the survey until all cable subscribers have received the new channels.

New expanded basic channels:

Channel 46 ESPN2

Channel 48 SpeedVision

Channel 52 MSNBC

Channel 56 Court TV

Channel 57 Comedy Central

Channel 59 Animal Planet

Channel 62 The Learning Channel

Channel 67 Country Music Television

Channel 72 Food Network

Channel 73 The Travel Channel

Channel 74 TV Land

Channel 75 Soap Network

Channel 76 E! Entertainment TV

Channel 77 FX Health

Cable ready TV sets will need to be retuned before the channels will appear.

If you have questions, call the Charter office at 335-4225.