by George Wiley
The press release's headline of Jan. 7 was unusual for its boldness; "Redondo to Consider Revoking Cable Franchise."
It would be a first, said Redondo Beach city manager Lou Garcia, admitting he was not aware of a precedent for a city to revoke the franchise of a TV cable company for breach of contract.
Redondo's City Council is claiming Century Cable violated their agreement when it completed a merger with Adelphia Communications before allowing the city to approve the takeover.
Now, the city wants to hear from the public on the matter. How good or bad is the quality of cable TV service in Redondo? A public hearing has been set for 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 18 for members of the public to comment on how they feel about Century/Adelphia service, and whether they would like the city to revoke the cable company's franchise.
For its part, Adelphia admits that its merger/takeover was allowed to proceed without Redondo's approval because it was a mega-deal involving the combination of two cable giants. Redondo wasn't the only city over looked in the merger approval process. According to Lee Perron, vice president for corporate affairs in southern California for Adelphia, the cities of Moreno Valley and Yorba Linda were also left dangling in the unapproved category when the merger went through. "Neither of those other two cities has made a threat to disenfranchise," Perron said.
Perron added that Adelphia is more than ready to meet with Redondo officials and negotiate the city's approval of Adelphia's takeover of the Century contract. That contract is written to extend through 2004.
"I am puzzled by this action by the city, and we absolutely want to sit down and continue discussions to resolve it," Perron said.
Not so fast, the city seems to be saying.
Garcia says Century Cable had many contract violations for quality of service and not following correct procedures before Century was taken over by Adelphia.
What the city wants to do now, Garcia said, emphasizing and re-emphasizing the point, is simply to gather public testimony before moving on in its discussions with or about Adelphia.
"We've been trying to negotiate for some time," said Garcia. "We don't have much leverage if Adelphia won't meet with us. We haven't met with them recently. I wrote them a letter and said there would be a hearing on Jan. 18. They hadn't been very interested until we put out the press release. Now, the city council wants to hear what the public has to say. Where do we go from here? We're not doing anything other than holding a public hearing."
Adelphia's Perron said the takeover of Century, which involves Adelphia assuming franchises in 83 southern California cities, represents Adelphia's first expansion onto the West Coast. Adelphia, which has its corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania has been largely an East Coast company, said Perron. Since the merger, their contract base now extends to over 1,000 communities with over 5.5 million customers, making Adelphia the fifth largest cable company in the U.S., said Perron. "Los Angeles is really our entry point to the West Coast," he added.
Perron said he was surprised by Redondo's sudden talk of contract revocation. "Adelphia has hardly done anything to create a situation that serious," he said. As he understands it there had been no lapse in negotiations with the city over approval of Adelphia as Redondo's new cable company, Perron said.
"I understand the closure activities. I apologized for those several times. We are not an adversarial company. We're here to build new relationships in the cities that we operate in. In other cities that had the exact same discussions that we've had with Redondo Beach, I feel we've got off to a good start."
As for claims that Adelphia was providing poor service, Perron employed a dual argument. First, Adelphia should not be blamed for service problems incurred by Century prior to the takeover. Second, Adelphia has an excellent record of service.
"We bring to the table a terrific reputation for customer service. Adelphia specifically has rolled out a two-hour service window. You don't have to wait all day. We'll give you a two-hour service window," Perron said.
Since Adelphia took over in Redondo on Oct. 1, there have been eight documented outages where service was interrupted, Perron added. Of those, he said, six were for no more than two hours and involved 100 or fewer customers. Another involved about 600 customers but was corrected in two hours. The major outage took place on Nov. 2 when power to Adelphia's whole system in Redondo was out for two hours. "We track our failures very specifically," said Perron. "Any discussion about them should be based on statistical data and not anecdotal information. Of the ones I looked at, the vast majority were minor."
Perron also noted that Redondo customers enjoy the latest in high-tech fiber optic transmission lines. Perron asked that Redondo pursue the "three Rs" in its negotiations, remaining "reasonable, rational and realistic."
"Adelphia, I would think would be the kind of company you'd want in your community," Perron said.
Perron promised that he would be at the Jan. 18 public hearing.
For those unable to attend the Jan. 18 hearing, the city is accepting comments by voice mail at (310) 937-6618 or by E-mail at: cabletv@redondo.org. Regular mail comments should be addressed to: City of Redondo Beach, CABLE FRANCHISE, 415 Diamond St. Redondo Beach, CA 90277. For those wishing to attend the hearing, the city hall address is the same as the mailing address.ER
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