Even before they've reached the nation's cable boxes, the partisan political channels (see "I'm Not a Reporter, But I Play One On GOP-TV," cjr, September/October 1994) are causing controversy. This past January, the nation's largest cable operator, Tele-Communications, Inc., announced plans to offer a package of political channels to its 12 million cable subscribers by the end of 1996. Among the likely channels: National Empowerment Television, a twenty-four-hour conservative channel best known for carrying Newt Gingrich's Progress Report, which already has its affiliation agreement with TCI; and the Conservative Television Network, planned by Republican strategist Anthony Fabrizio.

The conservative nature of these channels has raised the ire of The '90s Channel, the nation's leading liberal cable outfit. While his ideological opposites are granted the promise of a national audience, '90s Channel president John Schwartz says TCI has actively shut his channel out, raising leased access rates on the seven local systems that now carry it, and excluding it from the political package. "TCI has never invited us to be part of their political package," Schwartz says. "It looks like we don't fit in with what they want to program."

"The marketplace is the marketplace," responds TCI vice president Robert Thomson, who explains that the present package lineup, while predominantly conservative, represents simply those channels that have demonstrated the necessary financial and technical wherewithal. "We need to be sure that the channels, even if they don't start with twenty-four hours of programming, have the means to do so in a reasonable time," Thomson says. "We don't see the '90s Channel as likely to develop broad appeal." Still, Thomson says that in the name of ideological equality, TCI has "offered some limited financial assistance . . . to Democratic members of Congress and party officials" who have shown interest in creating their own version of NET and CTN.

 According to Andrew Schwartzman of the nonpartisan Media Access Project, this concern with cash flow is precisely the criterion that makes conservative channels more likely to thrive than more liberal ones. "The business community has a natural alliance with a channel that's going to promote a flat tax or deregulation," Schwartzman says.

With TCI's package set to debut on a limited basis before the 1996 elections, the 90's Channel has little time to raise money to meet TCI's standards. "If TCI would offer us inclusion in the package first," Schwartz notes, "we'd have a tremendous advantage in raising the cash to go full time and meet their criteria. But that's a vicious circle."

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe