| Rural
Life, Low Prices for Cable |
| As two bald eagles glided over the tree tops between our
house and White Lake in Michigan, my wife, Betsy, and I actually
watched the large inland lake freeze. The ice started at the
shore line and extended outward in unpredictable swirls, directed
only by the wind and the current. |
| Lake Michigan only freezes a few yards offshore, but the
inland lakes freeze solid, waiting for the ice fishermen and
the ice sailors to enjoy their favorite winter games. The
winter Olympics have nothing over this area. |
| It was just 20 degrees, and the snow, falling gently in
a slight breeze, covered the ice almost as soon as the water
froze. There were only about four inches of snow on the ground,
but to the north of us, the small city of Petosky was dealing
with more than 90 inches which had fallen in only eight days,
and the large city of Grand Rapids, about an hour away, had
already recorded about 60 inches of snow. |
| It makes this place sound like the North Pole, or at least
northern Canada, but this is a place of sanity and with all
the conveniences of Northern Virginia, without most of the
hassles. |
| For one thing, we have cable television here, and this rural
area has probably had it longer than the populated East Coast.
Without it, at least here in snow country, the evenings can
get pretty long in the winter. |
| But there is one big difference between cable on the populated
East Coast and cable in rural Michigan: price. |
| The cable channel lineup here on White Lake is just about
the same as I have in Herndon. We get 64 channels in Michigan,
not counting the ones that are –dark” or have just advertisements
on them. |
| The channels provided by our Charter Cable here in Michigan
include four ESPN channels, Disney, several music channels,
all the Fox channels, and the normal free music, food, car
racing, golf, comedy, game shows, health, and all the rest.
In Herndon I get three PBS channels as compared to one here.
That's about the only difference. |
| But here's the rub. My monthly charge in Michigan, for basically
the same channel lineup as in Herndon, is only $11.30 a month,
compared to about $53 Cox charges us in Herndon. Neither includes
pay channels. |
| We've tried to figure out the 500 percent difference in
price for about the same service, and it just doesn't make
sense. |
| The franchise fee Charter pays to the county is about 23
cents per month per subscriber. If you live in the Town of
Herndon you pay more than $2 in franchise fees. The franchise
fee is the fee Herndon charges Cox to provide cable service
in town. Cox then adds that fee on to cable subscribers' bills,
hence avoiding paying the fee itself. |
| What it amounts to is just another tax on service. |
| But even with the difference in franchise fees, we pay 500
percent more in Fairfax County than cable subscribers pay
in this part of Michigan. |
| No wonder people in Northern Virginia have had their fill
of Cox Cable. Time for a change? |
| |
| The
Freedom to Interpret |
| Watching several of the college football bowl games over
the past week, I was struck with the many ways the Star Spangled
Banner and other patriotic songs were played. |
| We heard everything from the precise singing of opera stars,
to enthusiastic renditions from pop singers, to the militaristic
and rousing playing of Marine bands, to the hard rock, ear-busting,
laser-light enhanced interpretation at the beginning of the
Colorado-Oregon game. |
| I'm sure there were many mixed emotions concerning the rock
interpretation, but it was all tempered when a football player
ran down the field holding the American flag in one huge hand
high above his head. He then handed the flag to an older man
on the sideline. |
| The story was striking: The football player had lost his
father in one of the embassy bombings in Africa, and the old
man on the sideline was a former Korean War prisoner of war. |
| One of our freedoms is to be able to interpret things the
way we see them, from a rock ¨n' roll Star Spangled Banner
to an American flag handed off to a hero. |
| And that's Our Town this week. |
