Through the Wire

Jack Robinson, the loss prevention specialist for Cox Cable in Orange County, Calif., has gained a new identity in the community during the last two months. He’s become “the bee guy.”

Operators often have problems with bees infesting vaults in the field: the colonies like the shelter of the boxes and the warmth of the equipment. But they can be a hazard for workers and nearby residents. Companies usually just call an exterminator to kill the insects.

But Robinson, an avid backyard gardener, gained first-hand knowledge two years ago of an ecological conundrum plaguing the bee-keeping industry. A syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder is occurring across the country, with whole hives mysteriously dying off. Fewer bees mean poor pollination, and that means trouble for commercial and home growers alike.

Robinson educated himself about CCD, and took a suggestion to the Cox Conserves program: What if the company relocated bees infesting equipment rather than killing them?

“As I learned more about bees and the disease, I thought it would be great for the company to be part of the solution,” he told The Wire.

The hard part: finding a professional beekeeper who is not just an exterminator in disguise. Robinson found a woman who agreed to relocate found hives to an apiary in Corona. So far, she’s relocated 19 hives for Cox.

“I get calls all day, even my day off, for 'that guy at Cox who saves the bees’, ” he said. “This could be another full-time job.”

In addition to the ecological good deed, there are two other benefits for Cox, according to the company. Relocating the bees has proven to be less expensive than extermination; and customers love the fact the company is conserving the insects.

“We applaud the efforts of Cox to protect live bees and relocate them to a proper and safer environment,” one couple said in an e-mail message, after Cox and the beekeeper removed 20,000 to 30,000 live bees from their property July 28.

Robinson goes out to all the hive relocations so he can insure the process is done safely, and to provide repairs if the bees have damaged consumer connections.

“I get a lot of great feedback,” he said. And the leftovers — the honey — aren’t bad either.

“Corporate comedian” Greg Schwem managed to get a lot of belly laughs last week skewering seemingly unfunny targets: The National Cable Television Cooperative and the American Cable Association, who hired him to perform at their confab, The Independent Show in Orlando.

Chicago-based Schwem said he was not familiar with either organization, so first he Googled the NCTC.

“I said, 'Know what? I’m going to do this show for nothing,’ ” Schwem told his lunchtime audience. “I am so impressed with this organization and what it is doing for our country and it would just be an honor and privilege to do a show for The National Counterterrorism Center.”

He found out that was not the right NCTC, and then Googled the ACA. “I said, 'Well, OK, the price pretty much stays the same. After all, the Amputee Coalition of America really also needs humor.’ Then I found out that you guys are cable television operators. Needless to say, the fee went up exponentially.”

Schwem then poked fun at the show’s schedule for that afternoon, which included a digital-TV technical update, a residential home-security revenue-stream discussion and a retransmission-consent session. “You scheduled all that in the same day? Whoa, next year spread the fun out. This is a multiday conference, pace yourselves, for God’s sake. Well, I can certainly see why you wanted to have comedy at this event.”

Best-off-the-cuff moment at the Disney World-based gathering: NewWave’s Tom Gleason flashing a cellphone photo of ACA president Matt Polka sporting a Mickey Mouse tattoo on his bicep. The Wire assume Polka’s “ink” was temporary.

Blink and you would have missed it. At 7:35 a.m. on July 28 in New York’s Grand Central Terminal, around 100 people wearing black and red polo shirts — a couple of them with hardhats — strolled calmly through the storied main concourse. The “march” was to kick off Verizon’s entry into the New York City cable TV business.

A few of the Verizon folks waved and murmured “Good morning, New York!” and “Hey, New York, FiOS is here!” to no one in particular. Three minutes later, the column filed up the stairs to 43rd and Vanderbilt, where the marketing team spent the rest of the day trying to sign up TV subscribers.

Nobody really noticed, except for The Wire and two videographers Verizon hired to record B-roll.

But it may be the calm before the storm for Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems, which are facing FiOS TV and a lineup of 100 HD channels in the city’s five boroughs. In the Big Apple, TV service will be available initially to 300,000 households, growing to 500,000 by the end of 2008. And capturing just a fraction of the share should get Verizon some attention.