The Virginia burg is another local government outfit that decided to try and take the place of Adelphia when that cable provider went into bankruptcy. The lure of monopoly profits of $2 million a year so very tempting to city leaders. But what does the city have to show for its temptation? Try $825,000 in legal bills. And that’s it.
This is yet another reason why Mecklenburg County and the northern towns need to stay the hell away from any notion of spending $80 million to run a cable TV franchise for 16,000 customers. We have no idea how much public money has already been spent on consultants and lawyers for this deal and we are not even to the complicated part. Plus, as we’ve said repeatedly, Adelphia’s broken-down system is far, far removed from the cash cow the towns and the county seem to think it would be.
That is why Time Warner would absolutely build out its own system to compete with the government-run monopoly should the towns/county gain control of the old Adelphia plant. The old Adelphia system needs to be replaced — period. Time Warner would have to do that were it to win the rights to serve those customers, so it might as well plan to do it anyway and take all the government’s customers when they are done.
In fact, it might not be such a bad to deal to be able to build out your new system while some other dope is trying to patch together and support the old system. The revenue from 16,000 customers is nothing to the huge Time Warner operation while support costs to the county will be ugly, not to mention totally outside the scope of proper governance.
There is very little more to say on this front. It would be utterly insane for local government, in the Year 2006, to buy an outdated cable TV franchise. No wonder, then, that we have to keep talking about that very possibility here in Mecklenburg.
