Idaho City: A No DTV Zone

Don Campbell is at his wit’s end trying to determine whether he can continue to deliver broadcast signals to his 150 cable customers after Feb. 17, 2009.

He’s between a rock and a hard place, literally. The rock is a mountain in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho. The hard place is Idaho City, Idaho, a former gold rush boom town with hardwood planks for sidewalks, where people stop along the Ponderosa Pine Scenic Drive. That city is nestled behind the mountain which separates the community from the source of its broadcast signals, Boise, 36 miles away.

Campbell’s community is an example of the minority of the population for which no provision was made in the national plan to convert analog TV signals to digital ones next year. This is a community where the advice “buy a converter and just plug it in” just won’t work. It is appears even a commercial receiver by the cable company won’t do the job to provide an informational umbilical to the 458 taxpayers living there.

“I’m in a really bad spot here,” Campbell told me. His subscribers aren’t just customers, they are neighbors and friends.

“These people live for their TV. There’s no bowling alley here, no movie theater. We don’t even have a bank. If a storm is coming, if a forest fire is coming over the hill, that’s where we find out about it,” he said. “That’s how we figure out who to vote for president – except for the (chatter) in the coffee shop in the morning,” he joked.

Cable isn’t Campbell’s only business. He has restored the Idaho City Hotel. That business prompted creation of the cable system. Campbell wanted some entertainment for his guests, so the operator, who got his degree in engineering, read books and figured out how to build a cable system in his hotel. But once the word got out, neighbors started asking for connections, and it turned into a cable system, he said. Since 1979, the operator has poured any profit back into the business, eventually improving the system to 550-MHz with 59 channel slots (though not all are programmed.)

The subscribers have managed with marginal analog signals all these years, he said, but the broadcaster’s new UHF digital signals don’t appear strong enough to reach the community.

Campbell said a helpful engineer from the Boise PBS station came to the community and ran lots of tests and hisr best prognosis was that Campbell had the possibility of drawing in the signals. That’s a pretty weak argument for investing $20,000 to $30,000 (if he could get his hands on that amount, in this economy) in equipment to receive the digital signals.

Though many small operators are burdened with the challenges of the digital television transition, Robert Shema, vice president and COO of their trade group, the American Cable Association, said Campbell’s situation may be the worst.

Campbell made inquiries of the commercial broadcasters in Boise, he said, but they were mostly interested in getting the operator to sign retransmission consent agreements, committing Campbell to pay to carry their signals.

“I’m not going to sign if I’m not sure I can get their signal!” Campbell said.

He tries to keep his rates low. “I don’t have the greed gene,” he joked. He recognizes that some subscribers live on Social Security and don’t even have enough money for gas to drive to a doctor, he said. The rate for cable in Idaho City is $21.95, and he doesn’t want to have to raise it because of a “forced mandate.”

The digital transition isn’t because of prettier pictures for consumers, it’s about freeing spectrum to sell for billions to cellular companies, he fumed. And because of it, “My little cable system will be out of business, unless something happens.”

This is a shame. Idaho City residents are taxpayers, too, and deserve access to the public airwaves. That doesn’t diminish just because they chose elk, deer and blue grouse as their neighbors instead of mini-malls and cookie-cutter housing developments.

Anybody out there have any answers for Campbell? Post comments here and we’ll get them to Campbell.