40% in Hermosa Beach Poll Unhappy With Cable TV

More than 40% of Hermosa Beach cable television subscribers are dissatisfied with the service, according to a recent survey, but city officials say there may not be much they can do to force improvements.

Multivision Cable Television has a franchise agreement with the city that extends until 1993. Although the city reviews the service every five years--a review is scheduled for October--company officials and some city officials believe that the problems do not provide legal grounds to cancel the contract.

“The renewal is almost guaranteed under federal law unless there’s some kind of gross nonperformance on the part of the franchisee,” said John Merritt, vice president of operations for Multivision. He said the service meets Federal Communications Commission standards.

City Atty. James P. Lough agreed that “without grounds, we just can’t terminate them.”

Survey by Mail

The survey was conducted in March by a City Council-appointed Cable T.V. Board, and the results were presented to city officials last week. Of the 6,000 surveys mailed out, 30% were returned. Board member Jane Allison-Fleck said unhappy subscribers were probably more likely to respond.

Of the 1,800 subscribers who responded, 41.7% said they are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their cable television service; 30.9 said they are satisfied or very satisfied, and 24.2% said they are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

“I was surprised that the results of the survey showed that there was anybody pleased with the system,” Councilman Roger Creighton said in an interview, “because all I’ve ever heard for years was that people were displeased.”

Other city officials also expected dissatisfaction.

“It didn’t surprise me,” Mayor Jim Rosenberger said. “I thought it was right on. I have all the problems they mentioned.”

He compared the system to a car. Not only is the cable system not a Cadillac, he said, “but we don’t even have a Chevrolet. We have a junker, and half the time it’s in the front yard not working.”

As do many other residents, Rosenberger said he must have cable to get any television reception. The city has several valleys that interfere with broadcast reception.

Multivision’s Merritt said about 52% of the city’s 9,900 households subscribe to cable.

Of the survey, he said: “I haven’t seen anything that really surprised us. If it’s really accurate, then there’s certainly some room for improvement in service.”

He said the company is using the survey “as a mandate. . . . Two areas where we see the greatest opportunity for improvement are reducing the number of service calls--which means we have to maintain the plant a little better . . . and in telephone response.”

Problems Near Beach

The survey showed that subscribers who live closer to the ocean have more problems with reception qualities than other customers. “Any beach system takes more corrosion,” Merritt said. “The salt adds to the degradation.”

He said the company will discuss with city officials how to improve the system.

Council member June Williams said the company has already had enough time to correct its problems. “What I’m in favor of is seeing if we can cancel the franchise and get somebody else in . . . but, legally, I don’t think we could do that,” she said.

City Manager Kevin Northcraft called the survey results “the best documentation of inadequate service I’ve ever seen.”

But Lough said the city cannot terminate the contract without strong reasons, such as breach of contract or inadequate service. “That’s the difficult thing to try to quantify,” he said.

Contract Not Exclusive

Lough said legal alternatives would be to try to buy the Hermosa Beach franchise from Multivision or try to get a competing cable company to move into the city. Multivision does not have an exclusive contract.

But city officials said it would probably be too costly for another cable company to enter the Hermosa Beach market unless it was done through phone lines. Federal law bars phone companies from running cable television systems, but the FCC recently announced that it will consider asking Congress to change the 4-year-old law.

Rosenberger said that if the city is obligated to stick with Multivision, officials may be able to renegotiate a contract renewal period of less than five years. “We have to have some kind of short leash on them so we can get some improvement,” he said. Lough, however, said he didn’t know whether this would be possible.

Merritt argues that Multivision already meets FCC quality standards, and city officials are considering hiring a consultant to verify that.

‘Waste of Money’

Merritt said: “We wouldn’t object to it . . . but we wouldn’t recommend it. It would be a waste of their money, really. . . . There’s nothing that a consultant, other than costing them a lot of money, could tell them that one of our engineers couldn’t come in and tell them.”

The city’s general services director, Joan Noon, said the city received three bids last year for the consultant work that ranged from $5,000 to $9,000.

Even if Multivision does meet FCC standards, some city officials still may not be satisfied with the system. Williams said: “We have been told that those standards are so low that it’s not hard to be above those standards.”

Multivision, which changed its name last year from M. L. Media Cable T.V., bought the franchise from Storer Cable in late 1986. After the sale, complaints about cable television service increased dramatically, Noon said.

The complaints have since decreased as Multivision has upgraded the system, she said.

The survey also showed that of the respondents:

57.8% said they frequently or often have static or interference problems, while 40.4% said they seldom or never have such problems.

61.5% said they could not reach Multivision’s offices easily by phone.

60.3% said that when a technician was sent out, he did not arrive when scheduled.

61.5% said the technician could not repair the problem on the first visit.

61.1% said they were not satisfied with repairs or service.

63.6% said the selection of programs is good or excellent.

74.7% had subscribed to the cable system for two years or less.

73.7% owned a television two years old or less.

The survey showed that subscribers had become increasingly more satisfied with the overall quality of the cable service during the year preceding the survey.

Asked to rate the quality of the service a year before the survey, only 3.8% considered it excellent, while 23.2% rated it as poor. (The others rated the quality as good or fair.) For the 3-month period preceding the survey, 7.1% of the respondents said the service was excellent, while 19.7% said it was poor.

Considering the current monthly subscriber fee--$14.95 for 35 channels--21.9% of the respondents said the overall quality of the cable service was excellent or good, 41.8% said it was fair and 31.7% said it was poor.