Cable TV Subscribers Ask for the World--and Get It

Members of the diverse and fast-growing immigrant population of the Conejo Valley and Las Virgenes area say they were pushed into abandoning their normally quiet presence there in the last few weeks.

But the group’s efforts, which included a City Hall protest and petition drive, have won the immigrants a cultural battle with the local cable television company.

The president of Ventura County Cablevision has announced that his firm will again carry broadcasting by international television station KSCI. He made the announcement at a meeting this week with representatives of the area’s foreign-speaking community.

“We missed the impact that this station has in the community,” Cablevision President Michael K. Kemph said. “I made a mistake.”

Kemph said he will break an agreement with QVC, a home shopping channel that had been added to the 31-channel system, to make room for KSCI by Aug. 1.

Asking Government to Share

In the meantime, Kemph said, he will ask city officials who use the cable company’s government channel if they are willing to share their channel with KSCI until then.

Foreign-born community leaders who attended Monday’s meeting praised Kemph’s decision to return KSCI to the cable lineup. Representatives at the meeting included residents of Japanese, Chinese, Armenian, Egyptian and Korean heritage.

“I think the whole community will be glad,” said Dr. Farr Ajir, a neurosurgeon and Westlake Village resident who emigrated to the United States from Iran 11 years ago. “By showing their good intentions, the cable company will enjoy more loyalty and more popularity from residents.”

Pakistani immigrant Abdul Sayeedi said that he and his family will again be able to watch an important Islamic program on Sunday afternoons. “Blacking that program out deprived myself and my children of our only religious program,” he said.

KSCI, based in San Bernardino, also broadcasts ethnic cooking classes, overseas news broadcasts, foreign films, variety shows and foreign-language serials.

Ventura Cablevision--which serves Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Agoura, Moorpark and parts of Camarillo--dropped KSCI on May 1. The decision sparked an outcry among bilingual cable subscribers, who said the station’s programs, in 16 languages, provided their families one of the few cultural links to their homelands.

200 People at Protest

The protest brought more than 200 people to a Thousand Oaks City Council meeting two weeks ago, including many who had never before participated in American politics. Residents said they also collected more than 1,400 signatures protesting the channel change.

Representatives of KSCI said the decision to reinstate the station showed the growing importance of international programming for Southern California’s large immigrant population.

More than 1.5 million viewers watch the 24-hour-a-day station in six counties between Ventura and the Mexican border, station officials said.

“We are dealing with many people who have fled their native countries because of oppression and lack of choices,” said Eileen Becker Salmas, cable relations director for KSCI. “They have now been able to exercise their rights as Americans and have seen the joy of being able to protest a decision.”

A survey conducted last year by the system’s previous owner, Storer Cable, had shown that only about 1% of the area’s 57,000 cable subscribers watched the foreign-language station, Kemph said. He said that prompted the decision to drop KSCI in favor of more popular programming.

Also dropped for a lack of viewers were KWHY, a Los Angeles-based financial news channel and KLCS, the Los Angeles Unified School District channel. In their place, the cable company expanded offerings of the Arts and Entertainment channel, Nickelodeon channel, the Thousand Oaks city channel and a home shopping channel.

The home shopping channel will be returned to the cable company’s offerings, probably in December, when the firm expands its channel capacity, Kemph said.