McAllen to hire lawyer as cable feud heats up
McALLEN — City officials from across Texas spoke with a high-powered lawyer Thursday about their feud with Time Warner Cable over the company’s plans to digitize public, educational and governmental access channels.
Time Warner wants to switch the signal carrying MCN 12 — McAllen’s governmental access channel, also known as the McAllen Cable Network — and other such channels from analog to digital on Oct 1.
The move would allow the company to free up bandwidth for new services, such as high-definition channels, but would require owners of older TVs to install a converter box to continue receiving the digitized channels.
McAllen hosted a teleconference with the lawyer, Nick Miller, of Washington law firm Miller & Van Eaton, who helped derail a similar plan by Comcast Corp. to digitize public, educational and governmental access channels in Michigan.
Comcast settled the lawsuit in February, agreeing not to digitize those channels until all other channels on its “Limited Basic Cable” plan also went digital or the local governments agreed to switch, according to court filings. Comcast also paid $250,000 to the local governments.
Time Warner’s proposal for Texas appears nearly identical to Comcast’s derailed plan to digitize. Asked about Time Warner’s move, Miller said his work with several Texas cities prevented him from commenting immediately.
“Stay interested,” he said, speaking by phone from a telecommunications conference in Dallas. “This is an important topic and it's not over yet.”
A former communications counsel for the U.S. Senate, Miller said he has worked with McAllen and Brownsville in the past.
McAllen closed the teleconference to the public, citing attorney-client privilege. But speaking after the meeting, McAllen’s city attorney said Austin, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, numerous cities across South Texas and several school districts participated in the 90-minute teleconference.
“The city of McAllen will be hiring, for sure, outside counsel to assist us,” said Kevin Pagan, the city attorney. Pagan said he wasn’t sure whether the cities would form a coalition to challenge Time Warner.
The cities fear people with older TVs, especially the poor, will not install the converter boxes and will lose access to critical information, such as hurricane warnings, broadcast on those channels.
Time Warner has offered to provide free converter boxes for the first year but plans to begin charging a monthly fee for some customers after that. A customer could return the device after a year to avoid the fee but would lose access to the public, educational and governmental access channels.
Time Warner’s plan would only affect channels delivered through its cable network. Over-the-air TV, which switched from analog to digital last summer, would not be affected.
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Dave Hendricks covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4452.
