Britt Unsure About Local HDTV for Basic-Only Subs
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 3/28/2007 5:20:00 PM MT
Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said Wednesday that his company hadn’t established policy for making HD local TV signals available to customers who buy just the introductory basic-programming tier.
“We have not addressed yet somebody who buys basic only and might want HD. My guess is that there aren’t very many of those people,” Britt said in testimony at a House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet hearing on cable’s role in the national shutdown of analog TV signals on Feb. 17, 2009.
Presumably, Britt’s point was that a subscriber who had spent hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on an HD set was unlikely to be among the small percentage of customers who don’t buy multiple programming tiers.
Britt’s comments came in an exchange with Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who indicated that cable subscribers with HD sets shouldn’t have to buy unwanted tiers of service from a cable company just to gain access to local TV signals in HD.
“Broadcasters provided this for free. It seems to me that cable subscribers ought to be able to get those on whatever tier they subscribe to,” Boucher said.
In response, Britt explained that his customers with HD set-top boxes who buy the digital-programming tier currently do receive HD local signals free-of-charge.
“In our case today, if you buy digital service, which does cost more than basic, and if you then want HD, we don’t charge any extra for it. Most of the other cable and satellite companies do charge extra, by the way,” said Britt, whose company serves 13.4 million video customers.
In another exchange, Boucher referred to February 2005 House testimony by Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner that after an analog-TV cutoff, cable operators intended to send local TV signals from their headends to homes both in analog and digital.
“Do you agree with that? Is that still the industry’s plan?” Boucher asked. Affirming a commitment to voluntary dual must-carry, Britt replied: “Yes, I do.”
Afterward, a reporter asked Britt if he believed his company had legal authority to convert digital-TV signals to analog at the headend. “We think we have flexibility to do what we need to do,” Britt said.
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