The only people who are satisfied with their cable television service are people who do not have TVs. When it comes to the channels a cable provider chooses to carry, everyone cannot be pleased at reasonable rates. I am certainly not interested in paying for three French weather channels because the guy down the street used to be a meteorologist.

Most people in Ames use TCI (which incidentally fails to mention what their initials stand for in the yellow pages) for their cable service. TCI is in the news quite often for a cable company, and it seems to usually be bad news for customers.

In October of 1996, Mason City residents found out that TCI was going to take WGN and Lifetime off the lineup. There was a strong reaction from customers, including picket lines. TCI gave in and kept WGN, but Lifetime was cut. That also raised problems because some said the decision implied that the sports on WGN took precedent over the women’s programming on Lifetime. (It was recently announced the channel is now coming back.)

In Ames, TCI has taken away channels like Comedy Central (many students were not properly informed of this decision), half of the Cartoon Network, VH-1 and Plex. The channels that were added included Disney, Animal Planet and Fox News, among others. The current dissatisfaction among customers (especially college students) is the unavailability of “South Park” on Comedy Central.

It is hard to determine what TCI is up to. Do they have a monopoly that allows them to pick a lineup which maximizes profit at the expense of customer satisfaction? (After all, who wouldn’t trade Fox News for Comedy Central?)

Not according to Deborah Blume of TCI of Central Iowa. She said that the first consideration in determining what channels to carry is, of course, whether there is an FCC requirement to broadcast it. After that, she said it is up to the customers because TCI realizes that other cable services are available.

There is, however, an inherent problem for us cable customers in trying to show our unhappiness. We cannot boycott our cable service very easily. If a customer wanted to protest by not using the service for a month, he or she would have to pay a hefty fee to get reconnected. Not going to the local super-duper-discount megastore is much more effective. Toilet paper can be found elsewhere if necessary.

There is another consideration in the process of creating channel options. Sometimes when TCI’s customers want a channel, TCI has to sign a contract with an interesting catch. For example, one company owns MTV, Comedy Central and VH-1. If TCI wants Comedy Central, the parent company may require, in the contract, that TCI carry VH-1 the next time a channel opening is available, possibly resulting in your favorite channel getting bumped.

These channel openings are somewhat limited. TCI can probably carry about forty channels. Which means that if you don’t have the extra movies channels, there would be room for Comedy Central, for example. (Now there is an idea.)

The shortage of channel openings is compounded by the fact that TCI wants to get into the internet service provider business as well. Cable connections are extremely fast and convenient, but there would be less room for other television channels.

It should be mentioned that there is still debate whether the cable companies should be in this business and whether they can effectively deliver internet service. The latest option for high-speed connections is a type of enhanced phone line. If this takes off, cable companies may be out of luck.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. Blume explained that TCI is experimenting in the Ames area with digital compression technology which would allow for ten times the channel space of the current analog system. This could potentially bring us the 500 channels that TCI talked about a few years ago.

Where do we students fit into the decision process? Blume explained that the amount of input Iowa State students are given in what they are offered on television is determined by the contract that the university signs with TCI. Because dormitory students receive bulk-rate cable, they are at the mercy of what the university can (or wants to) negotiate into the contract.

Aaron Klemm is a sophomore in physics from Woden.