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Free cable
boxes available
through Oct. 16
As the Town of Yorktown continues negotiations with Verizon for fiber-optic cable services, the town’s current cable provider, Cablevision, is switching up its services, and not everyone is pleased.
Cablevision announced earlier this year that all residents using an analog cable service would lose channels 18, 20 and 74: educational access, government access and public access, which will be transmitted into digital-only format later this year. Under a 2007 Federal Communications Commission mandate, all analog systems must be phased out by February 2009.
As stated in an Aug. 12 letter from Robert Hoch, Cablevision’s director of government affairs, “As a result of this change, a digital cable ready television (equipped with a QUM tuner), a digital cable box or a CableCARD will be needed to receive PEG (public, educational, government) access and local programming channels.”
In a memo dated Aug. 18, Hoch goes on to say that residents receiving analogue service should call 1-800-353-9821 and select “option 3” to continue receiving PEG channels for free.
“The offer of one free box to analogue customers and municipal/educational locations is available through Oct. 16, 2008,” Hoch writes.
It is unclear, however, whether customers would be charged after Oct. 16. As of press time, neither Hoch nor Cablevision could be reached.
According to Councilman Nick Bianco, the change is due to technological advances. He could not say whether Cablevision’s recent digital mandate was in violation of its 1998 contract with the town.
Dennis Tate, a public access host (although he has no working affiliation with the cable provider) and member of the town’s cable TV commission, said he doesn’t believe Cablevision is legally allowed to eliminate any public access channel.
“We’re getting short-changed,” Tate said.
Meanwhile, the board is continuing its discussions with Verizon, though officials said that for legal reasons they couldn’t discuss the details.
Bianco and Supervisor Don Peters both said that although the town is negotiating with Verizon, they also want to continue contract talks with Cablevision so that residents could have a choice of service providers.
Although it was reported earlier this year that the town’s contract with Cablevision had expired, and that the town was working with the cable provider on a month-to-month basis, Bianco and Peters now say that the 10-year contract with Cablevision is good until August 2009. The contract was signed by the town in 1998, but was not given official approval by the state public service commission until 1999.
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