Cable Executives Irate Over ‘Free TV’ Spots

Cable TV executives are seeing red over a promotional campaign that tells viewers that “free TV” may one day be a thing of the past.

The executives are asking the Better Business Bureau to look into the series of 30-second ads, running this month on television stations nationwide, that show future generations of youngsters expressing amazement that TV programs once could be had without paying a subscription fee, a cable TV official said Wednesday.

In one ad, a little girl stands next to a blank TV screen at her grandmother’s house, turning the knobs in a vain attempt to get the set to work.

“Grandma, how come we can’t watch TV at your house?” the girl finally asks as the message “sometime in the future” slips onto the screen.

“Honey, I just can’t afford the programs,” her grandmother answers.

“Dad said when he was a little boy, TV was free. Is that true?”

“It sure was. Back in the 1990s we watched free TV all the time.”

Cable TV executives say viewers are being duped. Broadcast television is not free, they argue, claiming that consumers eventually get soaked for the $27 billion that U.S. businesses spend on TV advertising each year.

“That’s a little bit like telling people that all the rides at Disneyland are ‘free,’ ” Community Antenna Television Assn. President Stephen Effros said in a complaining letter this week to the Better Business Bureau.

“The rides may be free, but you have to pay to get into the park.”

Effros, in his letter to Ronald Smithies, vice president of the bureau’s national advertising division in New York, said the ads are false and misleading and are “attempting to lull American consumers into the belief that they don’t pay a dime for all of those ‘free’ programs on their television sets.”