Cable TV: Information Highway Robbery

Their licenses to steal are paying off better each year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports Cable TV fees rising 77 percent since 1996, roughly double the rate of inflation.

For most American TV viewers, unless they buy iffy satellite dishes, hooking up to the local Cable provider is the only game in town. No matter where they live, their community gets paid to give one seller an exclusive franchise to pump information and entertainment into homes and pump out more money each year.

Imagine the US postal system not only being paid by citizens to deliver their mail but by magazines, newspapers and catalogue publishers to decide which of them to allow into the mailboxes.

It started 60 years ago when a small-town Pennsylvania shopkeeper, having trouble selling TV sets because a mountain was blocking reception from Philadelphia, put an antenna on the peak and began stringing wire into his customers' homes. It solved his sales problems and opened the way for cable systems to take over the nation's eyes and ears.

At first, franchises were handed out piecemeal in time-honored ways, by bribing local politicians, but national corporations soon took over, and now Comcast, Time Warner and a few others have it all locked up.

Every so often, Congress and the FCC are stirred to try to allow consumers to buy cable services a la carte instead of the packages providers deliver, but that might agitate the cash cows into delivering less corporate milk and the lobbyists are having none of that.

Three years ago, I started giving Cablevision $90 a month for cable, internet and long-distance phone service, but since then, the price has ballooned to more than twice that. Then again maybe I shouldn't complain. Now I can get dozens of channels in Spanish, Russian, Hindi and Yiddish that weren't available before.

Ole and oy vey!