Cable Television Industry Orange County

Focusing on Cable Competition: Navigators of the information superhighway may want to attend a forum on "Cable's Competitors" on Tuesday sponsored by the Southern California Cable Assn. Scheduled to speak are Lee Camp, president of PacTel Information Services, and Steve St. Marie, vice president of marketing for DirectTv, a partnership between Hughes Aircraft Co. and United States Satellite Broadcasting, which is developing a home satellite dish. The meeting begins at 6 p.m.

The specter of TV screens gone blank across the Southland has disappeared. All of Orange County's cable operators reached agreements with broadcast stations--hammered out late Tuesday as a midnight deadline approached--to carry the broadcasts as usual. Without such agreements, the signals of Channels 4, 5 and 11 were set to be pulled from the air in parts of Orange County at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. "The document was being reviewed by our president last night at 10:30 p.m.

About 50 cable subscribers upset over losing their FM service got a chance to air their grievances to Dimension Cable officials Thursday night. Although cable officials promised to expand the number of FM stations available on a service that requires a monthly fee, some customers didn't leave the city cable committee meeting happy. Heidi Lemon said she used to get FM stations as far away as New York City. "I listen to FM all the time. . . . It's a tremendous loss," she said.

In the steep, rocky canyons where the strongest radio waves cannot travel, residents have counted on their cable television company to bring them FM broadcasts. But the sound of FM radio fell silent Monday for 2,000 customers when Dimension Cable Co. converted the cables to give residents more television stations. That change has caused some residents to raise a noise of their own.

The local results of Congress' new cable television law, which takes effect Wednesday, are nearly as numerous as the cities in Orange County. Cable subscribers in Orange, for example, will pay the same $23 for expanded basic cable service as before, but they'll save $4.20 a month to hook up a second TV set. Many South County residents will see slight decreases in basic and expanded cable rates, but will also now have to pay $2.

Have a gripe about cable television service? Tell it to the City Council. Council members agreed this week to hold a public forum on cable TV issues. The forum was requested by the Costa Mesa's Cable Television Committee, which earlier this month condemned Copley/Colony Cablevision for offering what it described as poor service and increasing subscriber rates.

The county assessor's attempts to impose a property tax surcharge on cable TV operators has been dealt a third and possibly fatal blow by a state appeals court. The 4th District Court of Appeal, in a unanimous decision written Jan. 28 and released Thursday, ruled that the levy should not have been applied to the American Television & Communications Corp., which serves the city of Orange.

Times Mirror Cable Television Inc. said Thursday that it has completed its acquisition of Community Cablevision from the Irvine Co. for an undisclosed price. Community Cablevision, a cable company with 42,000 subscribers in South County, is based in Irvine. It serves customers in that city as well as in parts of Newport Beach, Tustin, Orange and unincorporated areas of South County. In addition, it also serves UC Irvine and the El Toro Marine base.

A proposed renewal agreement between the city and its cable television company will go before the City Council on Tuesday with recommendations that the term be limited to 10 years. The Finance Commission voted unanimously Monday after a four-hour public hearing to recommend that the council reject Community Cablevision's request to renew its service contract for 25 years. Several residents complained that the cable company provides poor service and bad picture quality.

A seldom-prosecuted white-collar crime--the pirating of cable television--is now getting the attention of city governments in Orange County. The reason: cities are losing thousands of tax dollars and are ready to do something about it. Cable television fees paid by subscribers to companies in the county are taxed by city governments, and fewer paying customers means less money to the cities. Huntington Beach, for one, is estimated to be losing $80,000 a year due to cable TV theft.