Bullying your way out of accountability

Actions truly speak louder than words. The latest action taken by Charter Communications to file a federal lawsuit against the city of El Centro after it took action to press the company to resolve the matter goes to show the company’s true colors.

This ordeal as you may recall began on Feb. 2 when KYMA and KSWT were taken off the air for Spectrum cable subscribers.

To this day both Spectrum and Northwestern Broadcasting, the company who owns both stations, have blamed each other for the failure to reach an agreement.

Because the company has continued to bill its local customers despite no longer carrying all of the channels they signed up for, the city of El Centro took different actions against Spectrum including: a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission asking for payment of damages and a rebate of charges, served them with five administrative citations for violations of a city ordinance, filed an False Claims Act claim against the company and asked for Spectrum to be ordered to reach an agreement with Northwest Broadcasting.

With the exception of the last one, the city of El Centro is doing what it is supposed to in order to exert pressure on Spectrum to find an alternative for its local customers.

Rather than trying to work on a solution to the stalemate in negotiations, the company filed a lawsuit earlier this month.

I don’t know who exactly is at fault between the station and Spectrum, however even if we assume that this dispute is the fault of Northwest, Spectrum has no excuse to keep charging its customers for not getting the full slate of channels they’ve agreed to pay for.

In the more than two months since the NBC and CBS channels went off the air, local residents have missed important events aired on these networks, such as the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, the NCAA Basketball Tournament, The Masters and others.

During the March 13 county Board of Supervisors meeting, Charter’s senior director of government affairs Buz Schott told the board they were working diligently to find a resolution. When asked to offer the customers a discount or rebate he said:

“We’re having that discussion right now. We hoped that this wouldn’t go this long, and that wouldn’t have been an issue, but we are currently discussing that” It’s been a month since those remarks.

The problem I see with that is that right after KYMA and KWST went off the air, Spectrum had a website, www.northwestfairdeal.com, which the company quickly put together to provide the public their version of the dispute but now appears to be inactive. This happened within hours of the channels being dropped. The decision to file this lawsuit against El Centro was also done fairly quickly after the city filed several complaints, but when it comes to making a decision to offer rebates or some type of discount to its customers, their reaction has been slower than their internet service.

The loss of two channels usually is not a big issue, but in the present case, it’s not possible to get an antenna to get the free over-the-air broadcast signal due to the distance to Yuma where these stations are located.

Let’s call the lawsuit for what it really is, a move to try to intimidate a disadvantaged community such as El Centro with the potential of a long and expensive legal process, only to continue to do nothing for the customers it’s supposed to serve.

Though I’m fortunate to not have been affected by this dispute as I have a streaming service rather than cable, I do have Spectrum’s internet service which I intend to cancel in coming weeks as I turn in my router attached with a copy of this column.