Classic cable cabal

WHAT’S YOUR favorite Oscar ritual?

Mine begins about a month before the Academy Awards. I put new batteries in the channel changer. I lay in popcorn and red wine. I check the TV listings. And then I snuggle in for my annual “31 Days of Oscar” countdown on Turner Classic Movies: “A Man for All Seasons,” “Ball of Fire,” “It Happened One Night,” “Meet John Doe.”

But not this year. This year, on the channel where TCM should be -- has been, for as long as I’ve had cable -- there are 31 days of

TCM has been shoved off the basic-cable lineup in L.A., the movies’ hometown, which is like blocking C-SPAN in Washington. On the ex-TCM channel, for 30 seconds or so, old-movie guru Robert Osborne taunted me: I could still see all my old favorites on TCM if I’d just switch over to Time Warner Cable high-definition cable.

For more money.

How did we get to this Hobson’s choice of channels? Time Warner and Comcast joined forces last summer to buy out Adelphia, which went bust because John Rigas, its founder, and his son ripped off the company to the tune of $100 million, some $13 million of that squandered on ... wait for it ... golf.

The two companies divvied up the Adelphia corpse: Comcast got Northern California; Time Warner got nearly 2 million of Southern California’s cable customers -- 75%, including most of L.A. -- all to itself. Sweet. And now it can slice and dice the channel lineup at will.

It irks me something fierce to think that the Adelphia-scam family, sentenced to prison for fraud, may wind up with better cable in the slammer than I get for about $50 a month in L.A. A&E; is more E than A (“Dogg the Bounty Hunter”?) and Bravo’s “great performances” come down to what reality-show competitors can do with a lemon zester or a bolt of peau de soie. And the “classics” on American Movie Classics run to “Inspector Gadget” and “Mother, Jugs & Speed.”

You too? Thinking of complaining to City Hall? Write fast. By April Fool’s Day, Sacramento is yanking the job of regulating pay TV away from local government and taking it over itself. In the name of competition, it’s letting phone companies in on the cable game but saying adios to local control, to local programming priorities and to holding local politicians to account when the TV providers screw up, or just plain screw us. Now it’ll be the state’s job to force and enforce -- and that doesn’t fill me with confidence. Cities haven’t shown much backbone dealing with cable, but at least you know what door to hammer on to complain about it.

Worse, the feds may be on track to do the same thing nationwide, meaning you’d have to take your pay-TV gripes to Washington. They’re running a country there -- or so I hear. What are the chances of getting help with your piddly complaint that Nickelodeon’s programming is straying into PG-13 territory?

As for the perpetual pledge that more competition will mean lower rates -- honestly, has it ever happened? Anywhere? In the last two years, cable fees nationwide leapfrogged at twice the rate of inflation. They’ve nearly doubled in a dozen years. The only thing competitive about cable rates is how they’re straining to keep pace with medical costs. A first-class trip to Europe has to cost less than a week of watching cable from a hospital bed.

I’m pretty much beyond expecting help. I’m moving on to the “How can I make trouble?” stage, and I think I’ve come up with a way that every one of us who clicks on a television can become a bit of human grit in the corporate gears.

As early as next week, Time Warner Cable’s stock will start trading publicly, available to anyone who can afford it. I don’t know what shares will cost, but Comcast shares are going for about $40 each. So, probably for less than the cost of a month of Time Warner Cable, you can become a Time Warner stockholder.

You’d get the stockholder reports. You’d get invited to annual meetings. You’d get a vote. We all would, if we bought in. Result: E pluribus noodge. Demand public access and local programming. Insist on bricks-and-mortar service. Because the only thing a lot of politicians are asking of these companies is campaign contributions.

Now that I think of it, this is starting to sound like one of my favorite movies. It’s about greedy, arrogant, high-handed, double-dealing corporate executives, and the little stockholders who stand up to them. An Oscar-winning film called “The Solid Gold Cadillac.” I’d sure love to see it again. It might even be on TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar.”

Wherever TCM is. Lost out there on the fairways, held hostage by the HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship.