ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 11, 1997 TAG: 9702110071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
After years of ranking at the top of residents' wish list, cable television may finally be coming to Roanoke's public housing developments.
The Board of Commissioners of the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority on Monday gave the authority's executive director permission to contract with R&B Cable of the Roanoke Valley to provide cable at the city's nine public housing developments.
Jim Mihalik, the housing authority's construction director, said minor revisions have to be made before the contract is in final form. But those revisions could be completed and a contract signed by the end of the month.
Subscription would be at residents' expense. But all 1,467 public housing units would be wired for service, said Bob Nay, general manager of the Daleville-based R&B Cable and vice president of marketing for R&B Communications, the parent corporation.
R&B would spend $300,000 to $350,000 on installation, Nay said. R&B operates a wireless cable system that broadcasts microwave signals from a tower on Tinker Mountain. The microwave signals travel by line of sight.
Installing cable at the public housing developments - in part, mounting antennas on roofs of buildings, installing signal amplifiers and snaking wiring from attics down to ground-floor units - would be "quite a capital outlay," Nay said.
As assurance that the project would be worth the expense, R&B would complete installation work at two or three public housing developments and monitor subscriptions for three months before moving on to other developments, Nay said. The company would want at least 60percent of residents in each development to subscribe, he said.
"We're confident we can get that penetration," Nay said. "I think it's way overdue."
Neva Smith, the authority's executive director, said cable television for Roanoke's public housing developments has been a hot topic for years. The lack of it has even kept some potential residents from renting, she said.
``It's been No. 1 on the list of everyone's wants for a long time,'' said Carolyn Johnson, a housing authority board commissioner who lives in Lincoln Terrace in Northwest Roanoke. ``When I saw it on the [board meeting] agenda, I thought `Maybe, finally, at last.'''
Television reception in public housing varies, Mihalik said. Some developments, overall, have poor television reception. In others, some buildings have clear reception at one end and "snow" at the other, he said.
Mihalik said housing authority staff had tried to negotiate with Cox Communications Inc., the Roanoke Valley's main provider of cable TV, to provide cable at the city's public housing developments. But the two parties could not reach agreement over "a lot of contractual fine points," he said.
R&B's standard service rate is $19.95 a month, which includes 20 channels, five of them local. Cox's standard service rate for Roanoke customers, effective March 1, will be $28.10 a month. That includes 50 channels, seven of them local.
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