Costa Mesa : Portions of City Will Receive Cable TV Soon

Parts of Costa Mesa, one of the last Orange County cities to get cable television service, will begin receiving cable programming by the end of this month.

Vincent Whelan, director of communications for the city and the liaison between Costa Mesa and Copley/Colony Cablevison Inc., said the cable company is well on the way to meeting its May 1 deadline for beginning service, and may even be able to finish the project early. “They promised the world, but they have been good,” Whelan said. “We’re pretty satisfied.” The $18-million project has been under way since late November, he said.

Carrying out a five-phase plan, the Costa Mesa-based Copley/Colony Cablevison will begin service in the southeast and northeast portions of the city by May 1, said John Merritt, regional manager of the cable company. The rest of Costa Mesa will be added, in three phases, between the end of September and next March, he said.

Although weather caused about a week’s delay in January, Merritt said work is progressing speedily and he expects delivery schedules for the rest of the project to be improved on by about a month.

Costa Mesans will be able to subscribe to about 60 channels, including major pay-television services as well as local news and community-access channels, he said.

Studios will be in the company’s 20,000-square-foot headquarters, now being built on Paularino Avenue. Merritt said the company hopes to draw on students from Orange Coast College to help with local programming. “We have met with several people from the college, and we expect they will be a source of recruiting,” he said.

Eventually, the cable company will offer extra services such as home banking and shopping, videotex, household security and alarm functions, Merritt said. Subscribers will pay $8.95 monthly for basic service, and pay-television channels and other services will be extra, Merritt said. The city of Costa Mesa, which granted the franchise in March, 1984, will receive 5% of the cable firm’s gross revenues, Whelan said.