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By John P. Ourand
I'm almost embarrassed to say that I wasn't surprised when Shirley Brady told me that she found out that the Bush administration loans that were supposed to encourage broadband in "unserved" markets instead were being used to overbuild rural cable operators (see "Meet the System--Mitchell, S.D.," this issue).
Maybe it's a function of living in Washington, D.C.--right next to the mind-numbing bureaucracy that allows things like this to happen--but I never really expect good policy to spawn good results.
But as I heard more about the mishandling of rural broadband loans administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service, that cynicism turned to anger. This couldn't be what President Bush envisioned when he set up this program. In South Dakota, for example, none of the $37 million in government-sponsored loans went to companies looking to launch broadband in rural markets that didn't have already it. Instead, the loans--amounting to federal handouts--went to companies looking to overbuild incumbent rural cable operators.
In other words, as NCTA's Lisa Schoenthaler says, rural cable operators' reward for being the first risk takers in those communities is to face a government-sponsored competitor.
Rural cable operators need to check the Agriculture Department's website daily to see if their community is targeted by an overbuilder looking for a federal handout (www.usda.gov/rus/telecom/).
Companies like Sanborn Telephone Cooperative aren't breaking the letter of the law by using these loans to overbuild rural cable operators. They are, however, breaking the spirit of the law. It's wrong. And it should be stopped.
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One person who has spent the past five and a half years working through similar bureaucratic shenanigans is our cover subject, NCTA president and CEO Robert Sachs.
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| Gary Marsh, EVP, original programming and production, Disney Channel, reads the latest edition of CableWORLD prior to addressing a roomful of TV critics at TCA. |
During his time on Mass. Ave., Robert has been somewhat of a polarizing figure. He has strong supporters (as evidenced by the list of cable luminaries quoted in my story in this issue, "Sachs' Legacy: Keeping the Regulators Out and the Programmers In").
But he also has many detractors--though few are willing to speak on the record. In particular, he has developed a notoriously prickly relationship with trade hacks, which sometimes colored the stories that were written about him.
During my interview with him early this month, Robert laughed when he described himself as a type A micromanager. He's well aware that he has that reputation. And he probably knows that it rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
But that style is part of the reason why he's been successful. As he prepares to depart this spring, everybody in the industry should thank him for guiding it through this period of regulatory stability--whether they like him or not.
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