BY DREW HINSHAW

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – St. Charles Parish Council members seemed woefully unimpressed with a Cox Cable spokesperson’s response to community complaints at Monday’s public hearing on the matter, and they closed the event by reiterating their hopes that another cable company will consider doing business in the parish.

Only one resident showed up at the Hahnville courthouse – to express his customer satisfaction with the cable service – but in at least 40 emails, residents voiced complaint after complaint on two issues: The unexplained disappearance of the TV Guide and Global Catholic Network channels.

But in their effort to move towards new-fangled high definition TV and digital cable services, the company says they have had to cancel those networks permanently.

&#8220Those channels are gone,” said the spokesperson. &#8220It’s just not something that’s going to come back on our system.”

To hear the spokesman tell it, Cox had to cancel those two channels to clear up bandwidth on their old-fashioned analog system. Their idea, it seems, is to anticipate increased demand for cutting edge high definition TV. They will begin broadcasting several sports programs in high definition by the end of the year, but to make room for those broadcasts on their cable system, they say they had to remove the TV Guide and Global Catholic Network.

Secondly, the spokesman says the company is trying to lure customers into slightly more expensive digital cable packages that include both channels. Digital cable can offer far more channels than its analog counterpart, and with satellite TV becoming more popular, the move to digital allows cable companies to offer a comparable number of channels. Cox is scheduled to phase out old-fashioned analog cable totally, in favor of digital cable, by February 2009.

The council’s retort was less than sympathetic.

&#8220People feel that you’re forcing the HD and digital stuff down their throat and they don’t want to pay for it,” Councilman Barry Minnich said. &#8220The folks on fixed income or the younger folks raising families, they can’t afford it.”

Down the line, council members reiterated Minnich’s view to the point of redundancy.

&#8220We want our TV Guide,” Councilman &#8220Ram” Ramchandran said, mimicking the famed ‘We Want our MTV’ ad campaign. &#8220You know what you get when you flip through channels? Commercial, commercial, commercial.”

Minnich pointed out that networks across the country have the TV Guide channel, including but not limited to Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Gramercy, Franklin, New Iberia, and the entire states of Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, California, and Nevada.

&#8220All these customers out here want it and you’re saying, ‘tough,’” Minnich said. &#8220As a councilman I must say I will not vote for you guys to come back in here.”

Councilman &#8220Snookie” Faucheux closed the meeting by reminding the council of the difficulties they’ve had attracting competing cable companies. &#8220At any time we can invite another cable company to come do business in the parish,” he said. &#8220The issue with that is they have to come in and build their own infrastructure.”

By his account, the parish may have an uphill battle to convince another cable company to do that.