Paul Davis: Knology isn’t a panacea, but it’s an improvement

Remember when you could watch TV with the rabbit ears that came with your set? First thing in the morning you’d stop by the TV, turn it on and go to the kitchen and start your morning coffee while all the tubes warmed up and brought the screen to life, both channels.

Oh, those were the days. Back then, there were two or three TV repair shops around town. If you were too cheap to pay the repair man, you could simply take the back cover off, find the tube that wasn’t glowing, pull it out and take it to the drug store and get a replacement.

If the set still didn’t work, you could borrow a pickup truck, load that refrigerator-size TV in the back and leave it at the repair store for a couple of weeks. When you did get it back home, it was like Christmas all over again. Both of our channels came alive. One signal came from Birmingham, the other from Meridian, Miss. It always snowed on the Meridian station, even in August.

That said, here’s a tip of the hat to the Auburn City Council for opening the door for another cable provider to come into this area.

For too long, this area has been forced to use one provider for this service, Charter Communications. Charter is a giant and giants rule. I have the Charter “bundle” and believe me, bundles are expensive. I pay more per month than my starting-out home mortgage. I get my TV, my Internet and my phone service over that one Charter line.

Newton Minow, the most controversial figure ever to chair the Federal Communications Commission, described TV as that “vast wasteland.” Knology won’t make TV any better, but it will provide some competition.

Today’s cable network gives us quantity, not quality.

Minow said it best in a speech to the nation’s broadcasters. Listen to his words:

“I admire your courage — but that doesn’t mean I would make life any easier for you. Your license lets you use the public’s airwaves as trustees for 180 million Americans. The public is your beneficiary. If you want to stay on as trustees, you must deliver a decent return to the public—not only to your stockholders. So, as a representative of the public, your health and your product are among my chief concerns.

“I have confidence in your health. But not in your product. I am here to uphold and protect the public interest. What do we mean by ‘the public interest?’ Some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. I disagree.

“When television is good, nothing not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.

“But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you, and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

“You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials —many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. ”

That was in 1961. In black and white. Now we have 300 channels, but the offerings haven’t changed and Knology won’t change that, but maybe we can by buy trash for less.

Paul Davis writes a Sunday column for the Opelika-Auburn News. You may contact him at