Brief by Central Staff
Media – December 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
TCI, Salida’s cable-TV monopoly, has been changing some channels. The new Fox 24-hours news channel replaced CSPAN, Court TV is on only half time to make room for something else, and KRMA, the Denver educational and PBS station, has been replaced by KTVD, a United Paramount Network station featuring a lot of Three Stooges and Jetsons reruns.
The loss of KRMA has a goodly number of Salidans upset, and they’re circulating petitions.
If you’re interested in signing one or circulating one, call Charles Arce at 530-0348. He has no answering machine, so if there’s no answer, call back later.
We tried to look further into this. The Salida City Council grants the franchise, but doesn’t have much more to say, especially concerning content.
TCI says there’s a “federal regulation” which requires the company to drop KRMA for KTVD, but a call to the Federal Communications Commission got the response that “there’s no regulation we know of that would require that. Cable companies are basically free to select their own channels to carry.”
But the FCC spokeswoman conceded that the regulations are complex, and there might be something she didn’t know about — she’d call back one of these days if she found something.
A call to the local TCI office got a suggestion that we call the Pueblo office, which suggested the Denver office, which has voice mail from hell — in other words, we got the classic corporate response.
Cable television is apparently a one-way medium. They send stuff to us, but there’s no way to talk back.
Anyway, we’re going to stay after this one until we get a coherent answer. Meanwhile, if you want KRMA back, sign a petition. There’s no guarantee it will accomplish anything, of course, but on the other hand, it can’t hurt.