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Time now for Off The Hook.
I expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Monday, let's go!
Monday, let's go!
And tonight on Off The Hook...
Tonight on Off The Hook we're going to be speaking about cable television and various
nasty things.
Alright, we're not 100% certain...
Oh yeah, I can hear myself.
I wasn't sure my voice was actually going out, but the only reason I know my voice is
going out is because I see those meters moving.
But that's how radio works sometimes.
Okay, we're going to be speaking about cable TV tonight and Big Brother and all kinds of
things like that.
So get your phone calls ready.
We'll be asking for some input here.
We'll be speaking with some special guests.
Just a moment.
And dance so totally that your egos melt and disappear.
Dance so totally that the dancer is no more there, but only the dance remains.
You start feeling.
You start swaying.
You suddenly feel a rush of energy.
You would like to dance.
You would like to dance yourself.
This is synchronicity.
Come on, come on.
Here we go.
You start feeling.
You start swaying.
You suddenly feel a rush of energy.
You would like to dance yourself.
Well, for those of us who have cable TV, we may be aware of some of the things that are
advantages.
We may be aware of some of the disadvantages such as always seeming to be the first thing
to go out in a storm and not having as many channels as you want, all kinds of other things
like that.
But a couple in Long Island have raised a whole kettle of fish here with the possibility
that cable vision or cable TV actually is an extension of Big Brother.
Now, what I'm going to do here is read an article that appeared in Newsday on August
2nd.
And that article will detail some of the accusations that these people are making.
And then we'll be speaking to the Vice President of Operations for Cablevision out in Long
Island.
And we'll be taking phone calls, too, at 212-279-3400.
Okay, this article was written by Gene Dugan Cooper, appeared in Newsday on August 2nd.
Is Cablevision watching you?
Well, a Huntington couple complained to state cable regulators that particular week that
Cablevision Systems Corporation, with its new sophisticated fiber optic system, knows
exactly what they're doing with their televisions and when.
Cablevision denies it knows what subscribers are watching individually, which is a violation
of state regulations.
I don't know if it's written specifically in state regulations someplace that you won't
do that particular thing.
But according to Newsday, it is a violation.
Its new system, scheduled to be in 560,000 Long Island homes by late 1994, can track
what people are viewing en masse.
The controversial issue came to light when Calman and Gail Brenner filed complaints with
the New York State Commission on Cable Television and the New York Civil Liberties Union, contending
that Cablevision's new system is invading their privacy.
Brenner's gripe began in early July, when Cablevision supplied them with a new converter
box and remote control as part of its $100 million island-wide upgrade project launched
in Huntington.
And Gail Brenner said that she had trouble taping a program, so she called Cablevision's
customer service department.
A Cablevision employee asked for our phone number, and called up the account on the computer.
And she said, you were watching Channel 6 and trying to tape Channel 6, and she told
me what time I was doing this.
The employee told Brenner that she had failed to tune her VCR to Channel 3.
I just said thank you for your assistance and got off the phone and said to Cal, my
goodness, this is scary.
They know everything I was doing.
William J. Quinn, Cablevision's general manager, calls the Brenner's claim absolutely impossible.
The customer service representatives are not now, and never have been, capable of telling
people what channel they're watching.
He says it's just a matter of, after doing it a while, you know the problems.
Monitoring an individual's television set without permission violates state Cablecommission
regulations, and carries hefty penalties as well, as in the most severe cases, the possibility
of losing a cable franchise.
The Brenners likely will have a tough time proving their case, said William Finneran,
the Cablecommission's chairman.
These franchises are quasi-public, and I can't see any management jeopardizing their
franchise with unsavory practices.
But civil liberties officials express concern.
It is unlikely that this couple would be able to concoct this scenario, said Laura Murray,
director of legislative affairs for the New York State Civil Liberties Union.
Should you, as a condition of having a television, surrender your right of privacy?
Only in America would Big Brother turn out to be private enterprise.
Cablevision's new system can, in fact, track what individual subscribers are tuned into
at any given time.
This is something that Newsday is saying now.
Cablevision's new system can, in fact, track what individual subscribers are tuned into
at any given time.
But the computer software only supplies the company with bulk information, Quinn said.
It performs a function similar to Nielsen ratings.
It tells us of, say, 20,000 converters in use, which percentage of people tuned in at
that time are watching what.
Cablevision has taken one poll since it rolled out the new equipment in Huntington, increasing
the number of channels there from 38 to 52.
We did it in the daytime and saw that in one case, 53% of us, 53% in use, rather, were
watching one daytime drama.
I said, that was very high.
Eventually, he said, Cablevision could use the capability to decide which programs to
run and which ones not to run.
Under the old system, the company relied on written and telephone polls.
Quinn says, we'd certainly like the ability to know in a very accurate fashion what people
feel about a certain program.
With this computer, we can look at 8, 10 p.m. and see that 13% were watching a certain channel.
The technology is known as addressable cable.
It also lets people buy pay-per-view by pushing buttons and could eventually enable them to
shop from their couches and play games with their remote control.
State consumer advocates aren't as enthusiastic about the technological advances.
They say the price for these enhanced services is privacy, and some are calling for new regulations
to keep the information from being abused.
Is there potential for abuse?
The answer is a definite yes, Finneran said.
Is the potential for personal monitoring there?
Yes, but we have to have sanctions, forfeiture, and big fines.
The laws will be revisited.
The State Assembly intends to hold hearings this fall to study the rapidly changing cable systems
throughout the state.
One issue expected to be scrutinized is how technology could jeopardize privacy.
Perhaps we ought to outlaw these types of systems altogether, said Assemblyman Steve Sanders
of Manhattan, who chairs the Governmental Operations Committee and is organizing the hearings.
I don't want to leave it to the scruples of a cable company to protect individuals.
Quinn defended the industry's ability to guard people's privacy on its own.
We don't sell our lists.
We don't tell anybody who our subscribers are and what they buy, he said.
We've had access to valuable information for years.
Again, that story coming from Newsday, August 2, 1991, and basically a couple in Huntington,
Long Island, accusing the cable company of monitoring them and seeing what they were watching.
Now, we spoke to that couple.
They declined to be on this radio program.
However, we do have somebody from the cable company involved, Long Island Cablevision.
This is the vice president of operations, Wilt Hildenbrandt.
And we'd like to ask you basically, I guess, just to respond to that article
and tell us your side of the story.
Okay, I'll do that.
Just a couple things before we start.
One, in terms of what my job is, it was vice president of engineering operations,
so I'm not necessarily qualified to go into all operational matters.
Okay, let's stay on with the engineering stuff.
Secondly, I was interested by and intrigued by how you opened with the fact that there's good and bad
and people complain about the cable going out in the weather and not having enough channels.
I think one of the things before we get off on the converter discussion that it might be important to get on the record here
is that part of the reason for spending this money in Huntington and on the rest of the system
is to improve those two very things.
The use of fiber optics gets us away from having to use over-the-air microwaves,
which is if the microwave tends to be affected by rain and weather and wind and situations like that.
Fiber is not. It's self-contained.
The more channels, you said it yourself, we went from 38 to 52.
So the converter box that we're going to be talking about is one of the mechanisms we've selected to use
to deliver those channels to everybody that wants them,
as opposed to just delivering those channels to whoever can get them.
I think that's just something I needed to clear up with you first.
Secondly, as far as your reading of the article, you read it accurately.
I don't have anything really different from what Mr. Quinn was quoted as saying in the article.
That's basically how these boxes work.
You can pull them.
It is part of the pay-per-view function in order to be able to find out what someone has purchased at any given time.
And there is the ability to pull the base like you described
and find out how many units or how many boxes, not to use buzzwords here,
how many boxes were actually tuned to a specific service.
It's not important to know, nor do we have any mechanism at this point,
and none coming to know what individual subscriber looked at what individual program.
The subscriber listing he mentioned is true.
It's been true from the beginning.
People call and order levels of service.
And we obviously, by definition, have to know what level of service everybody chooses to take.
We have never published those lists.
We do not sell those lists.
We don't intend to sell those lists.
And there has been pressure to do so, and we don't.
Whereas other things you subscribe to, magazines, and the list is almost endless,
we all know do sell their subscriber lists.
I think that's a fairly key part of it.
Whether or not you want to trust a cable TV company, like whoever said that,
is one issue.
On the other hand, history has to account for something.
And to my knowledge, I know this company has never sold a list,
and I don't know of any company that has.
I'd like to just ask about one line in that Newsday story that was written by the reporter,
saying that the news system can, in fact, track what individual subscribers are tuned into at any given time.
Is the capability there to do what these people are saying, and you just don't do it?
Or is it completely impossible?
Let's talk about what we said here.
The word I'll use is poll, because that's basically what it is.
We can poll the base of converters without paying any attention to where they are,
who's got them, or anything else.
We can poll a base of converters at time increments.
Say 8-10, I believe, was the time you mentioned.
We can poll converters at 8-10, or like Mr. Quinn said, at some time in the afternoon,
and find out where the group of people were tuned.
This is not while they're there.
They may have tuned off by the time we've collected the information.
So we can find out.
It tends to be after the fact.
It's not this live, interactive, it all assumes you move your button.
I know you've moved your button thing that we seem to be headed for in this conversation.
It's not that way at all.
It's absolutely after the fact.
It is not automatic.
It does need to be initiated.
And honestly, I can't think of one benefit to knowing what channel anybody is on
at a specific moment in time.
It seems like it's not information we could do anything with if we wanted to.
Well, you see, what I'm trying to get at is,
is it possible using the existing software or perhaps an upgrade in the future to,
if not do it live, then at least say, okay, what was, you know,
let's say it was a celebrity or something,
and somebody managed to get into the system and was able to manipulate it.
Could they say, what did this person watch at 810,
and pinpoint one particular person, or can it only work with massive numbers of people?
Right now, the way it works, it works with,
and I'm going to answer your question in a way that I think answers what you're after.
How to speculate as to whether someone could get into the system
and manipulate it to find out what, say,
a celebrity or somebody else was watching at a specific time
or what specific program it was watching.
We take a lot of precautions to make sure that access to the system
is controlled to a very few individuals.
It's not available to just anyone in the company,
certainly not available to anyone inside.
If you think it through, people's privacy is an important issue,
but so are all of our business records just in terms of doing business,
so there's lots of reasons to protect, you know, access to a system like this.
Now, the very thing we're talking about,
there are the potential here to put in whatever the article said,
560,000 of these units at some point in time.
And obviously in the Huntington part of the system there aren't 560,000 boxes,
so this polling is not, you know,
there's not a number that says if there's 10,000 boxes out there,
if there's 500,000 boxes out there, if there's 2,000 boxes out there.
There's not a number I can't poll below.
Right now we do not have available in the software,
nor do we intend to have available in the software
the ability to select one particular converter box
and poll it at one particular time
and find out what one particular converter box is looking at.
It's complicated, and I'm not trying to dazzle anybody here with lots of buzzwords,
nor am I trying to talk down at anyone.
It's kind of a complicated issue.
No, we do not have the software presently to poll one box.
There could be in the future a way to do it, I suppose, as technology goes on.
We all see this in almost everything we use and buy as technology goes on.
Well, you see, what struck me was the fact that it's a violation,
monitoring an individual's television set without permission
is a violation of state cable commission regulations.
Now, for it to be a violation, it tells me that it must be possible.
Otherwise, how could it be a violation?
This two-way converter type unit that we're talking about in this particular discussion
is new to us in this system.
We have tried working with it a number of times over a number of years.
I know a lot of people have heard and read and actually read very good press
about an experimental system that was run by, I believe, Warner Cable in Ohio a number of years ago.
Matter of fact, they made it on national television, I believe.
The Cube system, right?
Right. On the Donahue show, the Cube system.
That system actually could, I believe, interact real live, real time,
tell you what a subscriber was watching and what the box was tuned to at that point in time.
I believe that those earlier systems had that capability.
The legislators being smart, the operators and the public being concerned about privacy,
I mean, privacy is not a new issue to anybody.
I think the rules came from that emerging technology.
They certainly weren't written because of what we're launching in Honington.
I think there's a big gap of time in between there.
There's a lot of protection type rules on the books that even cover things that don't exist anymore today.
So in this particular case, these two ways, things have been going on for quite some time
and this isn't the only system in the country or in New York State where they are going on.
That leads to my next question.
Do you think all cable companies agree with what you're saying?
Do you think there might be some cable companies out there that would perhaps violate that trust?
I can only guarantee you, as far as our company goes,
what any other company would or would not do is, like with any other business, pretty much up to themselves.
The good thing about having a law there like that is you do put a pretty severe penalty on it
and it looks to me like whether we do it or not, and I know we wouldn't and haven't,
it doesn't look like it's worth playing around with.
At this time, let me just say our telephone lines are open and we're taking phone calls at 212-279-3400.
We're speaking with Wilt Hildebrand, who is Vice President for Engineering, correct?
Got it.
Got it right that time.
Okay, now maybe you could just tell us what you think happened with these people that claim that...
The important thing here is what I think happened.
I mean, I know what the system is capable and incapable of doing.
It's incapable of, and I hope this makes Mr. and Mrs. Brenner feel better,
it's incapable of knowing what they were doing.
Let me just back up a minute and say that one of the things I do in my job,
and in fact have done the whole time I've been in cable,
is since I'm involved in the technical and engineering side,
one of the things you learn how to do is how to troubleshoot, okay?
If someone has a problem, you either can go to the location and fix it,
or in many instances, like in the job I have today,
you have to work your way through the problem over the phone.
I've been doing this since sometime in 1972, 1973,
so I've got a little bit of experience under my belt when it comes to certain problems,
and there's things people can call me with that I don't have to see what they're doing
to have a fairly good idea of how to get, you know, from their description,
exactly what in the world happened.
Now, any of us in any of the experiences we have, whether it be working on cars
or fixing lawnmowers or refrigerators, air conditioners,
you know that when you can call a company for service
and they can ask you a couple questions and tell you,
well, go over to the unit, do this, do that, and do the other thing,
we all feel very good that we didn't have to hang around at home,
we didn't have to wait that this person knew what they were talking about.
Most customer service representatives, with the use of converters
and with the use of TV and videotape recorders,
get the very same kind of experience after answering a number of these calls
and understanding how the box works and something of how VCRs and TVs work.
There's a set of typical things that it's very easy for someone who has, say,
a box for the first time to make a mistake with.
I don't have any idea what questions were asked back and forth, asked and answered.
I know what's in the article.
I also know what the customer service rep was capable of pulling up on their screen.
The person asked for the phone number because by putting the person's phone number
into the system we can pull up their account on the subscriber,
in this case the Brenner's account, was what level of service they had
and what services were contained within that,
whether they had the new box in the Huntington system
or had not been upgraded yet to the new system.
The CSR, from looking at that map, if you will,
could work off a set of possible solutions to the problem
that Mrs. Brenner described to her.
I know reading it the way it reads it sounds very different than that,
but believe me, that information is not available at the customer.
The information of what anybody's watching is not available at the customer service rep.
And these people are trained and spent a lot of time learning how to handle
many problems that people call up with.
It's not a very exciting explanation,
but unfortunately exciting isn't always the way these things work.
It's the true explanation.
Okay. Well, let's take some phone calls.
212-279-3400 if anyone out there has questions about this kind of thing,
perhaps also about the future of cable.
But the main question is do you think it's possible for your cable company,
and of course a lot of listeners out there will have different cable companies,
do you think it's possible for your cable company to actually, if not do this now,
do this in the future,
or do you think this is something that is even worth spending time debating?
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Hello. Good evening.
Can they tell what you do with the signal after it enters your home,
before it hits the box, if you split it and stuff?
Good question.
I didn't quite understand.
The question was can they tell what you do with the signal after it enters your home?
In other words, if you run it to, say, two TV sets or a TV set in the VCR,
is there some kind of way of telling that and, in effect, charging you for two connections?
Interesting question.
There is, in certain circumstances, ways of finding that out.
One way, for example, that happens a lot is we work, and every business does,
but we work under a set of fairly stringent rules put out by the Federal Communications Commission,
and one of them is a thing called signal leakage,
where our signals are not allowed to leak out
or radiate out from the cable wire we use any more than a certain very small amount of signal level
over a certain very short amount of distance.
We're required constantly to monitor the cable system,
and that includes every wire in the system, even the wires going down to a house, for signal leakage.
The reason for that is fairly important.
We use frequencies that are also used by the aeronautical band or the airplane traffic,
and the FCC wants to make sure that any of the frequencies we use
that are similar to the frequencies that the aircraft use
do not cause any problems for the aircraft, say, guidance systems or anything else.
We regularly monitor or sweep the system with gear
that allows us to measure the amount of signal leaking from the cable now.
Our people are trained and retrained and work with very carefully to make sure
that when they run an additional set or even run the first set wire in the house
that all of these conditions in order to make the FCC were met.
Many times we will find that if a subscriber or a consumer buys wire at, say, Radio Shack
or, not to pick on Radio Shack, any of the electronic stores,
a splitter to split off another set at any one of the electronic stores,
that those things are not necessarily designed in specification that we specify for our equipment,
and we'll see signals leaking in excess of what we're allowed to,
and we're mandated by the FCC to either solve that condition,
which might mean asking for permission or knocking on the door
to get into the subscriber's house and see if we can isolate the problem that way.
Or if that isn't possible, we are made under FCC rule to disconnect service from that house.
There are ways we find things like that.
If I can just ask, what the policy is with cable vision as far as hooking something up to more than one TV set?
Is your policy to charge more for somebody that does that?
Right now, the only way that you can have more than one set hooked up operating at any time,
each one of the services we sell are part of the services we sell.
There is a charge for additional sets, yes.
Okay. Now, I know one of the – I just want to ask the caller if they have any more questions.
No, thanks a lot.
Okay, thanks for calling. 279-3400, area code 212.
I know one of the things that this new fiber optic system is making very difficult for consumers,
and that's the basis of another article in Newsday,
is the fact that it's, I believe, impossible to hook up another TV set without a special converter.
So there are some people that are saying, yeah, we might be taking a step forward,
but at the same time, we may be taking a step backward
because all of a sudden we can't do things that we once took for granted,
such as watching one channel while you're taping another channel.
Is it true that now you will need to get an additional converter with the new fiber optic system
if you want to watch a channel while you're taping something else?
You said a couple things at the same time, so let me just take them one at a time.
The use of fiber optics in the system and this ability to do this either additional set
or watch and record are not necessarily connected in that way.
The fiber optics isn't typically the thing that's limiting that.
The use of fiber optics, as we talked about earlier,
is a way to offer more channels that are better quality and pick up reliability
or that statement you made about the signal going out when the weather gets bad.
Now, let's take the next one, which I believe was,
it's your word, impossible to hook up another set
without having another box or that.
I believe that was one part of what you said, correct?
Right. Yes, that's correct.
Remember now, going back to our other conversation,
it's right now the way we offer cable service
and the way we feel we have to offer cable service at this time
is we really have to do the install and the connection on the additional sets.
Now, as to whether you have to have a converter box
or whether it's impossible to hook up a second set,
there are channels on the system that do not require the use of a box,
and there are many channels on the system that do require the use of a box.
So, while it is possible to hook up another set,
it is also true that there are a number of channels you will not be able to get
when you hook up that second set without a box.
Okay, but a second set...
Remains, though, that we are, at this time, with the conditions the way they are,
we are supposed to be the people that run and hook up the second set.
Okay, but a second set could also be interpreted as a VCR, right?
Could be. I'll come to the VCR thing in a second.
You have to understand that part of this service that the renters call
is when people call up for service.
There's no question if we can't follow it over the phone,
we do make an appointment and we do come out to their house for service
as many times as it takes, as often as they need it, without charge.
I mean, that's part of the reason for hooking up the additional sets.
Servicing something we didn't hook up is sort of a strange kind of a place to be.
I don't know of any industry out there that hooks up things,
that services things for free, at least, that they didn't install
or that they didn't put into the system, whether it be your heating system,
your plumbing system, or anything else.
So, that's an important concept to grasp.
Now, the VCR is something that takes some explanation.
The use of a converter box with the VCR does mean there is one more step
to be able to tape some of the programs.
We spent a lot of time on trying to make this converter box as simple as possible to use.
But, yes, it's another step. You have to select it.
It by no means makes it impossible to tape another program.
It means there's another step to do it.
It's part of this, and I've listened to some of the discussions you were having
on the radio station tonight about all of the topics that were covered.
It's part of this process of change.
In order to offer more channels and to do some of the fairly creative service offerings
that we're trying to do in Huntington,
which is giving subscribers the choice to buy services as they want
rather than buying whole blocks of services.
If they'd rather buy whole blocks of services, they can.
If they wish to buy a basic service plus some additional service, they can also do that.
If you need to offer services that way or choose to offer services that way,
and we have because of requests from subscribers,
then by definition you need some kind of control mechanism
so that you who might have asked for HBO and say Madison Square Garden can get it,
and your neighbor who doesn't want any of that can,
and just have, say, Showtime or ESPN or something else like that can have that.
Right.
It has to be a way of delineating that.
That's part of the complication.
I understand that.
My main question, though, is is it possible that somebody in the future wanting to just tape a program
won't have the same option that he has today where he's able to watch a particular channel?
Let's say he wants to watch Showtime, which he's paying for, while he's taping HBO.
Yes or no, will he be able to do that at the same time while he's taping it
using the new system without getting another box?
Without getting another box?
Right now, at this point, you need two boxes.
We are, just like we worked on this box, we're continually working on ways to just like,
and that's why I went through the discussion of how we got to the differentiated program services.
That came out of subscriber comments, the surveys Bill Quinn was talking about.
All of these things came out of surveys.
We know, unfortunately, a lot of things just can't happen overnight,
but we're constantly growing and we're constantly changing, and we do listen.
I just had a quick question and a comment.
On Cablevision, it's the only cable company where they'll take the weather channel
and cut it off at 5 o'clock at night.
I've watched about five or six other cable companies around the country,
and they cut off the weather channel to put on a sports channel,
when they could, I guess, easily put it on a different channel.
But I'm wondering, is this because if they had it on another channel,
they'd exceed their limit and they'd have to provide a public access channel?
Okay, listen to the answer on the radio. Thanks for calling.
A very good question, actually.
One of the reasons for expanding channels, I mean, we talked about this change thing.
As we had, I believe it's the number Mr. Quinn said it was 38 channels.
As we had 38 channels and at some point,
one of the options we had before we increased the channel capacity of the system from, say, 38 to 52,
was to share the channels.
It made a lot of people very happy, and it made a lot of people not so happy.
I mean, cutting off the weather channel at 5 o'clock at night
when there's a hurricane approaching to be topical is sort of a hard decision to have to make.
On the other hand, there's people sitting out there waiting to watch the sports program
that's supposed to come up, so not cutting off the weather channel is interesting.
One of the reasons for pushing this channel expansion,
and in fact in the completed portion of the Huntington system where the 52 channels are offered,
the weather channel is on 24 hours a day and not cut off for sports or for anything else.
As far as whether we'd exceed any limit and all of a sudden trigger into an access channel requirement,
I don't believe that ever has or had anything to do with how many channels we run on our system.
Okay, let's take another call. Good evening.
Is this WBAI?
Yes, you're on the air.
My question is, I remember a few years back when you had phones, you had separate phones,
you had to pay a separate bill for each additional hookup.
Why did the cable companies just give you one flat fee?
Because nowadays I can have five phones hooked up to my house,
and I just pay one monthly bill and that's it.
Okay, good question.
Do you think the day will come when cable TV goes the way of the phone company
as far as charging one fee for a hookup?
It's very hard to say.
There's been in the entire industry, and you were right before when you painted it,
that there's lots of different cable systems in the industry.
There have been discussions about that.
What I find kind of ironic about that, especially in tonight's discussion,
is yes, the phone company, after quite some time actually,
allowed you to hook up as many extension phones as you want.
You have to remember, too, that they bill completely differently.
Yes, they send you one monthly bill a month,
and I don't know exactly what the billing structure is,
but the bill runs, say, at least somewhere around $15
for the privilege of having a phone in your house that's without using it to do anything.
Every other usage you make after that is, yes, it was your choice,
but you're billed for every single minute in one way, shape, or form that you use the phone.
If you make long-distance calls, you're billed at a different rate for it.
Now implicit in that is their ability to know what type of call you're making
and what time of night or day you're making it and what number you're dialing.
Otherwise, they can't tell between a local call and a long-distance call.
But what started our conversation tonight is cable right now, like the gentleman said,
bills for whatever services you take, not necessarily which ones you use, watch or anything else.
If we were to look at a structure that was very phone company-like,
it looks like now with what's available and what all the rules that we have to deal with,
both FCC-wise and some of these other rules we've talked about,
that as you know, all the services are somewhat different.
The weather channel costs a certain amount of money.
Something like ESPN, Madison Square Garden, a sports channel costs something else,
all the way up to where you get to the pay-per-view type programming that costs on a usage base almost.
You would then have to know at any moment what any subscriber was watching, was looking at,
and how long they stayed on it because that's the structure of the billing of the phone company now.
I don't know if that's something that everybody wants.
I mean, that's part of one of the things we're talking about tonight is some kind of privacy, what we want.
And right now there are no plans to go that way,
but that certainly is one of the ramifications to going that way where you're on a usage-based
and a service-based type of billing structure.
You, by definition, have to know what everyone's doing.
Otherwise, there's no mechanism to bill them.
One of the people in the studio is curious, and I know this is not your particular area,
but maybe you could theorize a bit as to why Brooklyn and Queens, after all this time,
still don't have a cable system in place.
Brooklyn and Queens don't have a cable system in place?
Actually, I know that's not true.
There are some places in Brooklyn and Queens that do have some cable.
The places that we're putting systems is in Brooklyn.
You're putting systems in now?
Oh, sure.
How come it took so long?
Because I know Manhattan has had cable for, I think, since the 60s.
Okay. Let's take another phone call.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Okay, enough of that.
Good evening.
Hello? Is anyone there?
Okay. That line is dead.
Good evening.
Hello.
Yeah, go ahead.
Andy Willis. I enjoy your show.
I'm glad it's not every week now.
Thanks.
Let's see.
I was wondering about radio cable.
Is there a radio cable?
I've heard people hooking up into regular TV cable and getting FM signals.
Do you provide that service?
In some of our systems we do.
In others of our systems we do not.
Yes and no.
Not in the Long Island system that I know of, but in some of the other systems we do.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah. Well, I've heard of people just somehow hooking up their FM receivers to the cable
and getting radio for free.
It's like always on the cable line itself.
Radio for free? But radio is free.
Well, I mean on cable though.
How is it different on cable than it is over the air?
Probably maybe a better signal.
I suppose.
Although, you know, everybody that complains about radio and folks trying to listen to BAI should take note.
You go to Radio Shack, you get one of these little T antenna things that you stick on your wall.
It costs like about $1.98 and you get beautiful reception.
Far, far away.
So I don't think you need to go to all this trouble just to get radio reception.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Okay. That's just my opinion on that.
212-279-3400. Good evening.
Yeah. Hi.
Here in Queens we have pay-per-view.
And a person can program it right into his cable box.
I believe that the way they bill people for it is that from the office they send a signal to the box
and to each individual box and it actually tells them what you had been watching.
Now I think the gentleman from the cable company was talking around the issue quite a lot,
but could he just categorically flat out state that there's nobody at his company under any circumstances
who can see, who can tell what a person had been watching?
A specific individual person?
Yes. That's right.
Because, I mean, I think that's how they bill people in Queens for the pay-per-view,
by sending a signal to see what they had been watching.
Okay.
I didn't talk around that one at all.
And if I sounded like it, I apologize for doing that.
I believe I did mention specifically that one of the mechanisms that brought this ability to find out
what the box had looked at was the ability to collect for a pay-per-view purchase
that someone was able to do with a box that allowed them not have to get up and call on the telephone,
not have to talk to anybody, just order the movie.
So, yes.
And if there was only one subscriber, and this is why it might have sounded like talking around,
if only one person bought that movie and the computer went out
and polled the universe of boxes for anybody that had bought pay-per-view to let it know,
then, yes, in that circumstance, you would talk to one box.
The intent is not to go out and poll one box.
You're polling, like in the Queens scenario and in the Huntington scenario with pay-per-view,
anybody that purchased pay-per-view.
If only one person answers, then, yes, in that circumstance, you'd be talking to one person.
And, therefore, you can tell what a person had been watching.
Well, you do not.
And what I said, we do not have the capability to do is just go and say,
let's take your box, sir, and just call your box and say, what have you got?
I mean, I understand that.
Well, how do they bill an individual?
How would they bill an individual then?
You have to take that information back from that poll you do
and sit down and reference it to the subscriber account at some point.
Right.
So then that means they can tell what a person had been watching.
We're talking about two different things, though.
The question I was asking is could we go pick on one converter and ask it, what are you doing?
That's not what we're doing.
We're asking a general question to all converters.
If one box responds, then one box responds.
Well, now, can you say—
There's a big difference, and the question here was what we or any cable company intend or can do.
We are not capable of just selecting your box from the universe and saying, did you do this?
If your box is the only one that responds, then, of course, by definition,
I'll know that you ordered a pay-per-view event.
Okay.
Let's go on to—
I'm sorry.
You have one more question?
Well, they're sending the bill to the one person.
They knew what each individual watched.
It's as simple as that.
That's right, but we don't poll.
We don't go ask.
I think what he's saying is that it's the policy of the company not to look at this information.
They get information as to who to bill, but they don't go out and seek the information.
Is that correct?
Right.
I'll go along with that.
I believe that—well, that may be true.
Thanks for calling.
Did you want to finish what you were saying?
No, I just said that is true.
I mean, we don't go out to ask any individual box.
And this was the number thing we were going through before.
If there's 10,000 people that buy, we get back 10,000 responses.
If, in fact, there's one, yes, by definition, you'll get one.
The difference is in the question that was asked is can we select or would we select one box and target it.
The answer to that is right now we cannot, and secondarily, we're not interested in doing that.
Right.
Now, I think there's a difference between the two questions you just asked, can we or would we.
And I believe you when you say we would not, but—
And I also said right now we cannot.
Okay, but I find it hard to believe that it's not possible to alter the software.
I mean, I'm not saying that you will do this.
There's all kinds of things.
You know, when we start delving into the realm of possibilities and what it's conceivable for anybody to do, of course, anything is possible in any business.
I mean, we do control our business and we do not.
You know, there's been, like I went back to the simplest thing without even dealing with technology,
when a subscriber calls up for GetPayPerView, when you call up and tell me you want to subscribe to cable and you want HBO,
Showtime, or whatever list of services you want, I've had that information for a hell of a lot of years.
And I guess if we're going to include can, would, should, we've had requests, we've had people talk to us,
we've had lots of questions about selling our subscriber list, and we do not.
There's no reason that because we've got a capability now, A, to make it easier for people to order PayPerView,
they don't have to get up and call on the phone, that we're going to change a policy that we've had for 20, 30 years now in the industry.
We don't sell our list.
Right, and I—
That's the problem with getting into can and woulds and what are the probabilities that someone—
What I'm trying to establish here, now, I believe that you will not sell your list to anybody or even let anybody look at your list,
but we both know that it is possible for such a list, whether it be from your company or from any other company, to be looked at by other people.
What I'm trying to determine here is, is it possible, you know, for some evil company somewhere that's doing this,
say in, you know, Alaska or something, for them to allow the system to be abused like that?
I'd love to be able to answer that, but I don't know how to answer a hypothetical like that.
You know, what some company might do in Alaska, given the right opportunity and the right box, who knows?
As to what people have watched, specifically what films they've watched, I went into a video store the other day,
and I gave the name that I use to get videos.
I always try to use a different name just to keep them on their toes.
And the printout printed out the film that I took out last time that I had taken a film out, which was about a month ago.
And so I realized, to my horror, they keep records.
Maybe they don't do anything with the records, but they do keep records as to what it is you're taking out.
Not that there's anything wrong with my viewing habits, of course.
212-279-3400, you're on the air.
Hello?
Go ahead.
Hold on a second. Let me turn down the radio.
Okay, and speak up, too, when you get back.
I'd like to know about these antennas.
They're supposed to steal those signals.
They advertise them in these magazines.
I think what you're trying to ask is antennas that allow you to steal the signals, is that it?
That's right.
I'd like to know about them, because are they a fraud or what?
Well, if they go around saying that they're to steal the signal, I would bet that they are a fraud.
Is that the word they use or the word you use?
They say that the HBO signals and all the other signals are right in the air, and all they do is just pull them in or something like that.
Okay, I'll let our expert try to answer that.
Thanks for calling.
Tough one to answer without seeing the actual ad.
I've seen a number of them, obviously.
There are legitimate services, though, that allow you to receive things if your area, say, doesn't have cable, correct?
There's satellites that transmit a lot of similar programming to us on cable, and there's, I believe, in New York City and a number of other cities,
there's services known as MDS services that require a small antenna to be able to receive their services.
A lot of these ads, and I won't say they're all wrong, but a number of them are,
a lot of these ads talk about selling you the antenna to receive the service.
You'll get the antenna, and in some cases, you'll receive the service.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side of the fence you happen to be sitting on,
protect their signals or encode their signals or scramble their signals, much for the same reasons we do.
And so without the unit from the company to be able to decode, de-scramble those signals,
yes, you'll buy an antenna that'll receive the services.
So if you're after the scrambled signal of HBO, then this is just what you want?
If you wanted to watch the scrambled signal of HBO, then I guess you could.
Okay, let's try to fit in a couple more phone calls real quick now.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Yes, it's a very, very good show.
I have two questions.
One is very quick about what topic you were discussing before.
Is there any legal basis for a cable company to actually tell a homeowner what to do with a cable once it enters this home?
And the second question is a little more elaborate.
I happen to know of, there are de-scramblers, black market de-scramblers that will de-scramble every single
and give you pay-per-view 24 hours a day.
You will not have to call pay-per-view.
It will just appear on your screen.
Is there any way for the cable company to detect these type of boxes?
I'll hang up and listen.
Okay, thanks for calling.
Let's do the complicated one first.
Okay, we only have about two minutes, so you're going to have to make it fast.
The complicated one is, yeah, I know of black boxes that will defeat everything we do at the present time.
That's correct.
Can we detect that the box is there?
No.
Can we do things to make the box no longer effective?
Yes.
The first question you might want to repeat for me.
Oh, the wire inside the house?
Right, what legally can the cable company do?
One of the more compelling things, I mean, we've spent some time talking about what rules may govern us,
is that FCC rule that we went through at some length before.
I am absolutely mandated not to leak signals out into the airwaves,
and I am absolutely also mandated to take whatever step I need to stop that.
Now, I cannot go into the house.
If I'm not allowed access into the house, you know, we're not a government agency.
We are not allowed in the house.
But our solution to that is to disconnect service to that house,
and we have to, under law by the FCC, disconnect service to that house so we can get access.
And if I understand your statement correctly,
you're saying that by splitting the signal within the house,
the homeowner would be contributing to leakage of the signal, which is something that you want to stop.
That could happen.
Okay.
If it were possible, and this is just a hypothetical question,
if it were possible to split the signal without leaking the signal at all,
would the cable company not worry anymore?
No, I think we'd still worry.
Okay.
All right.
We've been speaking to Vice President for Engineering of Cablevision,
Wilt Hildebrandt,
and we want to thank you very much for taking time to speak to us about these various cable issues.
And hopefully we'll be hearing more about what Cablevision is up to in the next few months.
Thank you.
I enjoyed it.
Okay.
And the program is off the hook.
We are off the air now for another week.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
Emanuel Goldstein, have yourselves a nice night.
Good night.
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A brief message and then we'll get to a personal computer show.
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