The Printer’s Devil

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The biggest demonstration I’ve personally witnessed had nothing to do with Vietnam, civil rights or the Gulf wars.

It everything to do with cable TV and the Chicago Cubs.

It happened several years ago. At the time, there were only two cable TV companies in the nation, and they were — and still are — giants. In the particular small city I worked in, one of them had signed a Guantanamo-style contract that gave them total control of the city’s cable franchise for a hundred years or so.

They were a law to themselves.

So it wasn’t surprising when they announced a sharp hike in their basic rates and moved the channel for WGN, the Chicago broadcast and cable channel that carried the Cubs and moldy movies and TV reruns.

There were some public squawks. The staff at the local cable office on a prominent corner downtown, representatives of one of the mightiest media companies, dismissed the complaints with Olympian aloofness.

Then the little old ladies and old men showed up with their picket signs.

The staff at the local cable office, representatives of one of the mightiest media companies, smirked.

But more little old ladies and old men showed up with more picket signs, including taped to the front of walkers and back of wheelchairs, over the next couple of days. They urged their fellow citizen residents to boycott the cable company.

The staff were still defiant but they weren’t smiling — and I heard that the worthies from the mightiest media company were now paying attention from their remote fastness in New York City.

More little old ladies and old gents showed up. More signs, more wheelchairs and walkers. Besides attention from the local newspaper — I helped on that score — it was attracting attention from outside of the city, including broadcasters, eager for a chance to revenge themselves the cable giant. Other residents in the city, stirred up by the demonstrations, started canceling their subscriptions to the cable.

By the end of the week, there was no more aloofness, no more cockiness. The cable giant, instead, was desperately looking for someone to capitulate to.

The mighty cable monster surrendered, utterly and abjectly.

The price increase was drop-kicked and the Cubs stayed on the cable channel they had been losing on.

As the cable giant (and a fair number of newspapers, as I’ll explain later) found out, you don’t mess with people and their TVs, especially old people.

I mention that for two reasons — one which will be elucidated now and the other for a future post.

For now, I’ll say that on Feb. 18, 2009, tens of millions of televisions will suddenly go black.

The federal government and the nation’s broadcasters have spent gazillions to switch from regular American broadcast signals to high-definition digital signals.

On that day, TVs that aren’t hooked onto cable TV systems , don’t have the special digital tuner or a converter box turn into coffee tables — that’s the plan.

Proponents tout the change as one that will provide better sound and pictures to viewers.

That broadcast stations will make a killing by leasing their existing analog channels is a mere coincidence.

However, the feds have spent little to alert viewers; the head of the program says he’s relying on TV broadcasters to spread the word.

And if TV broadcasters are as cheap as CorpsNews publishers, I suspect viewers won’t have clue until their TVs go blank.

Indeed, one survey shows that 61 percent of the viewers don’t know what’s going to happen.

It’s just beginning to dawn on a few august members of Congress if that happens, that:

• Most of the people with older non-digital TVs are old people, minorities and the poor.

• Most of those people are going to be extremely irate.

As Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told one broadcast executive, ‘‘They’re not going to call you. They’re going to call me. And they’re going to be mad.’’

• Actually, they’ll be more than mad. Most old people and minorities — and considering this involves TV, the poor as well — who get extremely irate vote in higher percentages than the rest of us uncivic slobs. And they don’t vote for the guy or gal representing them in Congress.

That is just beginning to dawn on some of the more foresighted, or at least politically savvy, Capital Beltway bandits.

There is a ‘‘high potential for a train wreck here,’’ said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

And those on the train will be whoever is in Congress.

And well-heeled broadcasters and lobbyists will find out that no matter how much cash they’ve shoveled into Congressional pockets, there is no mightier force than angry voters and panicked Beltway bandits frantically trying to keep their Congressional paychecks and perks.

I predict digital TV will die a fast and ugly death.

The broadcasters won’t know what hit them.

I suspect what we’ll see frantic broadcasters going door to door shoving digital converter boxes at surprised little old ladies as they try to keep the gravy train from derailing.

True reality TV. It will be beautiful.