Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510230171
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED GREGORY CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Long
Most people, however, just know them as cable guys.
Plenty of people have rich recollections about encounters with cable TV: Waiting for a customer-service representative to answer the phone, only to be abused when one finally does; taking time off work to wait for a cable technician, who shows up a few days later; watching the sod torn up by a cable truck turn to mud and then weeds.
David Letterman gets considerable acid mileage out of his experience waiting endlessly for the cable man to arrive; cable guys are skewered in radio ads; and actor Jim Carrey is to portray one in a broad sendup, ``Cable Guy,'' about a wacky cable repairman who infiltrates the life of an unsuspecting subscriber and wreaks havoc on his personal affairs.
There is a much more serious side to the cable industry, of course.
Part public utility and part entertainment, cable TV has grown so fast, and with such a monopolistic hold on viewers, that the most visible byproducts of its expansion may be its shortcomings - and the vitriol they draw from customers.
All that is changing.
Cable competition is sweeping across some areas. Pending federal legislation would intensify that competition. In addition, 2-year-old federal regulations have begun to nudge cable companies to pay closer attention to servicing viewers.
What a concept.
All of those factors, experts say, are adding up to general, albeit slow, improvements for subscribers.
``I think the cable companies have realized that they need better customer service if they're going to compete in other industries,'' said Peter Dame, assistant to the village manager in Oak Park, Ill., which has sparred with a cable company over poor service. ``They had a slow learning curve when it came to customer service. They were a little slow on the uptake.''
Rates have stabilized, said Barry Orton, a cable TV consultant and a telecommunications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And municipal officials say complaints are tapering off in many towns.
Sharron Davies, community relations manager for Cox Communications Roanoke, said her company's recent survey of customers showed high levels of satisfaction and signficant improvements in several areas.
She said the company's Cox Quality Improvement program has led to several changes that customer's especially like, such as replacing an automated telephone system with a human being to answer customer service calls. The program also has led to improved lobby service, she said, including accommodations for the handicapped.
Like many other cable companies, Cox now guarantees to be on-time for service and installation calls, offering rebates or free installation for missed appointments. Davies said the company averages missing only one of its 3,000 to 4,000 appointments every month.
"It's good to see the rest of the industry moving toward" a similar commitment to customer service, Davis said. "We hope we will continue leading the way.
``I would categorize it as poor but improving,'' said Joyce Gallagher, cable TV administrator for Chicago and chairwoman of the Chicago Cable Commission. Complaints about one of the city's two cable TV providers, a subsidiary of Tele-Communications Inc., have dropped for two consecutive months, she said.
``We've had the first hopeful indicators lately, but it's been exasperating,'' Gallagher said.
For all the improvements, much of the exasperation remains. In some parts of the country, complaints about high rates, poor reception and arrogant customer-service representatives are only part of the problem. Things, at times, have gotten ugly.
About two months ago in Schaumburg, Ill., for example, a confrontation between a woman and a cable TV subcontractor working near her yard escalated to the point that police were called.
In Chicago, viewers have called City Hall with complaints about their reception, only to discover that the service had been connected by pirates who illegally spliced the cable signal and then charged the viewer.
This is the coarse reality that Mark Sanders and other technicians navigate in the performance of their jobs. In nearly five years of rolling through service calls for Continental Cablevision, Sanders has collected vivid memories.
The most extraordinary was the woman in Buffalo Grove who screamed at him for a half hour, refusing to let him leave until her signal improved.
Then there was the disrespectful taunting from a mutt outside the home of a subscriber who happened to be away at the time. When the dog charged, Sanders jumped a fence and scurried up a utility pole, dropping one of his work gloves in the process.
The dog carried the glove to the center of the yard, dropped it at his feet, and then plopped down behind it.
``He just stood there, egging me on,'' Sanders said. ``Wild things happen out there sometimes.''
His experiences mirror an industry in which the greatest consistency has been change. Developed in the 1950s as a way of wiring rural areas to television, cable TV's popularity took off in the mid-1970s, when an increased amount of programming made it a cornucopia of entertainment, according to telecommunications professor Orton.
At that time, slightly more than 9 million homes with televisions were hooked up to cable TV, according to the National Cable Television Association. Today, more than 62 million households have cable TV.
Continental Cablevision, which serves 350,000 customers in 81 Chicago-area communities, has seen its nationwide customer base grow to more than 4 million today from fewer than 300,000 in 1979.
``Inside of 15 years, we effectively built a third utility,'' said Bob Ryan, Continental Cablevision's vice president for governmental affairs.
But in 1984, the Cable Communications Policy Act eliminated regulations that would have let governments exert some control, as they do with utilities. The result, Orton said, was that rates rose steadily and service deteriorated.
That is when the horror stories began accumulating. They continue, although encouraging signs began surfacing after Congress passed the 1992 Cable TV Consumer Protection and Competition Act.
The law reimposed regulation, including Federal Communications Commission standards on customer service. Those standards, left to local governments to enforce, established time limits for cable representatives to answer the phone, set deadlines for repairs, and created a rebate system for cable TV outages.
``It went from the point of being an entertainment luxury option to a basic information source that enough people took so that it became utility-like,'' Orton said.
But just as the situation seems to have improved, more headaches could come from the latest federal telecommunications legislation, which would let all phone companies and cable TV providers compete in each other's businesses. A congressional committee is working to reconcile versions of the bill passed by the Senate and House.
``What the future is going to look like is awfully hard to tell,'' Orton said.
He speculated that vigorous competition probably will drive up rates by about $5 a month over three years and may create the kind of haphazard, rapid growth that brought problems for cable TV viewers in the 1980s.
Still, subscribers may see service improve and rates level off after the shakeout period, Orton said.
All of this gives cable guys such as Sanders reason for hope. Orton said unfavorable perceptions are gradually changing, and as long as people such as Sanders do their job well, they should have no cause to worry.
``Anybody who can climb a pole and attach a cable or fix it when a squirrel chews through it will always have a future,'' Orton said.
by CNB