Niceville Gets Nasty With Warner : Television: A Florida town is setting up its own cable system to compete with a media giant. Time Warner is not amused.

With a name like Niceville, it just has to be good.

Real good . . . and when it comes to television, real determined.

There’s nothing passive about the cable viewers in this small Florida panhandle town sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and the massive Eglin Air Force Base.

Niceville is doing what others have only dreamed of. It’s starting its own city-operated, citizen-financed cable company.

And it’s doing that despite the presence for almost 20 years of a cable service owned by the biggest media company of them all, Time Warner, which has its cables and wires and programs into 95% of the homes in Niceville, population 11,000. But from the early ‘70s, apparently, a long list of service complaints apparently dogged the relationships between Warner Cable and its subscribers.

Unlike many cable contracts, however, the Warner Cable and the Niceville arrangement is non-exclusive, which eventually gave Niceville the opportunity to go into the cable business itself.

Whether Niceville is setting an example or merely being an aberration . . . well . . . that may be up to the courts and time itself.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Time Warner’s arguments that its First Amendment rights were being trampled on when Niceville floated a bond issue to build its own second cable service. Another legal challenge was put down in by the Florida Supreme Court recently. One legal case is pending by Time Warner against the city but the city feels confident that it will win that one also.

Niceville is updating its 6-year-old feasibility study for wiring all of its four square miles. By the end of this month it will ask for bids to put its cables overhead and underground, right alongside Time Warner’s. By the end of September, says Niceville City Manager Lonnie Corbin, a winning contractor will start the wiring work and by a year from now Niceville citizens will have a choice when it comes to cable.

What comes next may be the most interesting part of this David vs. Goliath struggle.

Once the final feasibility study is finished and the contract signed, the city will establish a seven-member program committee. Each of the five council members gets to pick one committee person and the mayor gets to appoint two.

These seven will decide program services and with the council help run the new cable facility.

Historically, says city clerk George Ireland, cable subscribers don’t have much influence over what programs they get and the type of service offered.

Now it will be different in Niceville. The customers won’t just be changing channels. If they’re unhappy with future service, they can change council members.

And obviously Niceville citizens are more than interested in television democracy. They voted overwhelmingly in 1985 to float a $2-million bond issue to finance their own cable company after years of complaints about the service they were getting from Warner Cable. They turn out en masse when issues come up before the council on cable rates and stay away when similar debates are heard over water and sewer rates.

The program committee hopes to provide state-of-the-art equipment and services for its customers. City manager Corbin talks of interactive channels, home security services, more programs on city services and issues.

But the big questions will be what program services the committee can line up and whether Time Warner, which owns HBO and Cinemax and bits of other cable networks, would go along with selling programs to its competitor.

City officials aren’t too concerned about that. They think they can work something out. Warner Cable still has a contract until 1995 with the city and probably will want to renew. Besides, there are more cable networks than there are cable outlets available to the city.

During its struggle with Time Warner, Niceville was contacted by more than 30 other cities and communities. Two other small Southern cities have since started their own cable service without resistance from the established private companies.

“We’re a pretty progressive community,” city manager Corbin says. “Our economy is strong. Our educational level is higher than most. Homes sell up to $200,000 here. Our people are responsible.”

Responsible and determined.

And about that name, Niceville? We couldn’t avoid asking. Has it always been Niceville?

Just for the last 50 years, we found out. That’s when a postmaster took it on himself to change things. Until then the town was called Boggy Bayou.