Don’t Hit That Dial, It’s Already Changed

You know how it is up there on the throne of clouds occupied by the very high and mighty of communications. These giant corporations get so preoccupied with lofty interests that they haven’t time to stay in touch and bother with the wee folk on the ground whom their business decisions affect. That includes such lowlifes as their cash-paying subscribers, without whom these executives would be selling oranges at freeway offramps instead of getting nosebleeds in their haughty corporate stratospheres.

So . . . here’s my story.

I was watching the Odyssey channel Monday, wondering about this unknown, undefined cable curiosity that I had been noticing on my TV lately, when what should arrive in the mail but my new channel card from Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), my thoughtful cable provider. You know, the card announcing--for the first time--channel changes that TCI had implemented in my area a mere 34 days earlier without warning. One of them was the introduction of Odyssey.

TCI is the Denver-based behemoth of U.S. cable system operators. On Dec. 30, my local system joined other TCI systems nationally in making sweeping programming changes that TCI neglected to announce to those who would be watching that programming.

In fairness, I must backtrack a bit on that not-staying-in-touch charge. In January, I did get my usual itemized monthly bill from TCI, of course. And with it an advertisement for life insurance, plus a little card I could fill out to place my order. And also in the envelope was a six-page fold-out booklet listing and describing coming Home Cinema selections and how to order them at $2.95 a pop, not including this month’s exciting “Ultimate Fighting Championship” at $21.95 and three hours of a wrestling “Superbrawl” for just $27.95.

But nothing about the changes, which not only included the elimination of VH1 and the filling of previously unoccupied, higher-numbered channels with other programming that you would not have known was there, but also a realignment of some present channels. All of this just appeared. One day the old lineup, next day the new. You didn’t like it? Go elsewhere. Except you couldn’t, for there was no elsewhere.

After glancing over the just-mailed channel card, I called my local TCI operator to ask why we had had to wait more than a month to learn from the company about the changes it had already put in place. I mean, talk about corporate arrogance.

“TCI told us that we were no longer to do local marketing,” said a spokesman for my cable operator. “So we sort of told people by word of mouth.” That word never reached my place, nor scores of others, according to a story that a local newspaper published about viewers here being teed off at TCI.

I did get the word from the local TCI man about Odyssey. “It’s a faith and values channel,” he said. “Most of their stuff is reruns, things that lift your spirits. Lemme see. You know Hoss Cartwright?”

“In ‘Bonanza’? “ So far I wasn’t feeling uplifted.

“Yeah. You remember one of his brothers got his own show and was sort of an angel? Good stuff like that.”

Forget about staying in touch with subscribers--it appeared that the TCI spokesman wasn’t even in touch with TV.

He was referring to Michael Landon, who, after getting famous as one of the Cartwright brothers in “Bonanza,” achieved much more success in “Little House on the Prairie,” and only then went on to become an angel in “Highway to Heaven.”

TCI is praying for greater profits. The programming changes were enacted by its hosses in Denver, reportedly to reduce costs by replacing less popular or expensive channels with those willing to pay the cable company to be carried. Traditionally it’s the opposite, with cable operators paying the programmers.

It’s not the changes but the disdainful way they were achieved that irked me. In fact, I applaud some of the additions.

Yes, the Golf Channel is a real dozer, the Cartoon Network is mostly an assembly line of uninviting, unimaginative reruns, and Encore Flex is just another undistinctive movie channel. Yet I can think of lots worse things than watching subtitled foreign movies and Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman play Beethoven on the Bravo arts channel. And there’s something very calming about withdrawing from the frenzy of your life into the narrowly focused isolation of Home & Garden Television.

The comforting monotone buzz, the folksy manner, the thick gut pushing against the buttons of the red-and-black plaid shirt tucked into his jeans. Why it had to be Norm, head workman of “This Old House” on PBS and now also appearing on Home & Garden Television in reruns of a former PBS series, “The New Yankee Workshop.” “Today’s project is a Shaker-inspired medicine cabinet,” he said. Well, why not?

Canceling Viacom’s music channel, VH1, was a bad goof by TCI, however. As it has elsewhere, the company is responding to public pressure in my area by returning VH1 to its lineup, about March 1, said the local operator’s spokesman. Due to a scarcity of channels, however, something else will have to be bumped to make room for VH1, he said, and getting the greatest “consideration” is another newcomer, Animal Planet, a Discovery Network spinoff airing programming about animals all the time.

“It was just a special, wonderful thing that TCI added for people,” the cable man said about Animal Planet. Not so wonderful that it isn’t expendable, though. “We thought it was the least harmful to take off because people weren’t used to it,” he said. Probably because few knew it existed, unless they discovered it inadvertently on the channel formerly home to American Movie Classics, which was relocated . . . somewhere.

Even while belatedly announcing its changes, TCI has yet to inform subscribers in my area about the specific nature of some of the programming it has added, leaving it to them to take the plunge blindly, as I did with Odyssey.

It turns out that not all Odyssey programs are network reruns. There are also TV preachers and programs about the Scriptures. And on the screen Monday night, the host of “Inspiration, Please!” was quizzing three contestants: “If it’s a horse’s gallop or gait, it’s spelled one way. If it’s a religious person at a synagogue who chants or sings prayer, it’s spelled another way. What is it?” The answer was canter/cantor.

Another question: “According to the mythologies, she was the only one of the three Gorgons who was mortal. And she had snakes for hair. Who was she?” The answer was Medusa, who, according to myth, would turn to stone anyone who looked at her. It’s a fantasy I’m having these days about my friendly cable operator.