🚀 go-pugleaf

Bravo is a cable station offered as part of your basic package on some
cable systems, for a bit of a fee on others, and not at all on TCI's
Boulder system.  It offers lots of interesting movies including foreign
films with subtitles as well as a mix of other `artsy' offerings such as
opera and the like.  Don't get me wrong, I like PBS and even subscribe
to KRMA, but when watching 6 or 12 I often feel like I must be watching
the Discovery Channel (love those adorable bears...!-).

Anyway, I've asked both Boulder Cable and TCI about Bravo in the past
and was told that Bravo wasn't in TCI's interest on a nationwide basis
(this says something about what they think of their subscribers, but
that's a different matter).  Last year when I was doing my year in
advance thing (pay for a year and get a credit for 1/11'th of the
amount which may or may not be worth a month when the time rolls
around) a friendly and helpful fellow saved me from terminal hold (no,
I don't mean ^S) and helped me with arranging to pay them all that
money.  He added that he was the new manager of Boulder Cable and was
answering the phone because it was busy.

Well, this didn't sound like the Boulder Cable I'd come to know and
hate.  I asked my usual `What about Bravo?' question and he seemed
interested in what I had to say (the basic argument is that despite what
TCI's corporate twits think, Bravo would surely have a strong following
in a town like Boulder).  It also seems that during the past year
service has actually improved -- I've noticed few outages, I could get
through on the phone the few times I've needed to, and the person I
talked to this year about my year in advance was actually able to figure
out how to do the billing!

So, (this won't make a long story short, but if you're still with me you
{\em must} be interested in Bravo) when I asked my `WaB?' question this
year I was told that Boulder Cable was actually negotiating directly
with Bravo!!  So far the negotiations have failed and the Boulder Cable
side of this is that they're a small system and Bravo wants too much
money.  But they're still trying -- I was told that what would help the
most, both with Bravo and the corporate dolts (not the word they
used...;-) from TCI, would be a nice stack of letters from interested
subscribers (better still -- folks who would subscribe if they added
Bravo).  So here's the name and address of the nice fellow I talked to:

   Dan Hebert
   TCI Cablevision of Colorado (Really [TM] Boulder Cable)
   P.O. Box 17610
   Boulder, CO 80308-7610

Honestly -- he was nice and seemed to care about what we had to say and
the stack of letters is what he needs more than phone calls.  Let's gang
up on TCI and se if we can't actually get Bravo locally.

  Richard
-- 
Richard cook@spot.Colorado.EDU | cook@Colorado.BITNET | +1.303.492.2148
Social Science Data Analysis Center, University of Colorado  80309-0483