It seems evident many do not understand or have not been informed of the number of cable companies, the industry is growing smaller by the day. There are fewer and fewer independent cable companies. What does this mean, really? In actuality, customer service suffers, local decisions are made at the corporate level and real needs of a community are ignored by these large companies.

There are basically five major cable companies that dictate what the industry does. They have deep pockets for lobbyist and lawyers that look out for the cable industry's interest. That's okay until the local community is no longer be serve.

Example, there is a small community where I live which cable system is owned by one of the big five. The system is constantly having signal problems. The citizen call for service and little to nothing is done for the citizen of the community. A story was related to me about this cable company concerning one of the government leaders of the community, this individual had terrible reception and called for a technician. The technician came out and told this individual the problem was inside his home. The technician left with that as his answer. The local government leader communicated again with the major cable company and told them who he was and why his reception can not be fixed. This major company sent another technician out and discovered there was water in the transmission lines on the company side of the lines.

This is typical with this company's service. It appears they don't care about this community. Because of the long running problems with the system, the cable company is loosing subscribers virtually everyday.

These big companies are so far removed from the local community, they say they are community oriented, but it's just lip service.

Our federal leaders need to come down to the trenches and see what is going own. The cable industry may not need a total work over, but we do not live in the 1960's or 1980's anymore.

I'm all for the cable companies making as much money as they can make, but not at the expense of the local communities they are suppose to be serving.

This response to Rep. Barton is from a longtime (era 1961) active, very active Mississippi businessman Republican who at times has been part of cable ownership, has had partners who were pioneers in cable and who has owned small businesses, several of them newspapers and now a cable TV programming company using ‘leased access’, and one that disagrees on cable’s need to be ‘re-regulated’.

Cable is no longer the domain of the local entrepreneur who provided a media service that even included local programming but one controlled by mega corporations who are more concerned with the stock price at the end of each day than whether or not they’re even coming close to being decent corporate citizens of the towns that granted the franchise they profit from.

I’m sorry Rep. Barton, but you’ve been sold a bill of goods by cable and I say this as someone who has at times been the local PR mouthpiece for a cable operator.

I think Congress needs to look at how cable has shown absolute contempt for Congress as they refused to follow the mandate to provide a ‘genuine outlet’ for local programming by producers unaffiliated with cable. They’ve done this with the overt and somewhat blatant assistance from FCC’s own Media Bureau and its predecessor as they’ve repeatedly sided with cable in leased access disputes.

A simple perusal of past orders in ‘petitions for relief’ regarding leased access issues will reveal such glaring examples of this that an elementary student can’t help but see it.

So, please Rep. Barton, talk with some of us who know both sides of cable before swallowing their ‘spin’ on FCC.