Cox Cable Omaha on new warpath against public access TV; a 79¢ subscriber fee bothers it, but a $4.69 "ESPN tax" on every subscriber? Not a problem!

Cox Cable, which for years has been playing fast and loose with its franchise agreement, in respect of community access responsibilities, has finally managed to piss off even normally comatose city officials, who are on the verge of jerking the rug out from under Cox and insisting that it underwrite independent facilities which will not be under Cox's (literally) leaking roof.
     Apparently federal law permits Omaha to collect 5% of Cox's gross revenues in Omaha and to mandate that Cox pay capital costs for public access studios and equipment which will presumably be better than Cox's crappy current facilities. Cox can recover capital costs with a customer service fee, which it estimates as follows, derived from a City consultant's estimate:

...a $0.79 tax on each and every subscriber for each and every month of the ten-year term would be required to fund those costs. Such a fee would be enormously unpopular with Cox’s customers.

Horrors! Less terrifying to Cox is the astronomical cost of ESPN programming, which it imposes on all its customers — even the significant percentage which doesn't watch sports. This is estimated at $4.69 per customer per month, or 6 times more expensive than a small proposed fee for adequate public access television facilities that causes Cox to collapse on its corporate fainting couch:

According to estimates obtained by Sam Schechner and Martin Peers of The Wall Street Journal, ESPN charges cable companies $4.69 per subscriber per month... up 42 percent in the last five years... the average cable channel charges just 26 cents per subscriber per month, up only 24 percent during the same period.

     Those costs are then passed on to the cable customers on their monthly bill. And unfortunately for most, that cost is being shared by all cable customers, not just the sports fans.
     An executive with the company that owns the Starz network recently called ESPN "a tax on every American household."

AKSARBENT actually had to dig up this story itself, as the World-Herald has scantly covered this, being apparently too busy making public record requests for sexually salacious emails by School Board President candidates and then publishing them on its web. AKSARBENT is not used to having to work this hard and it is not amused.