LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE
(Page 2 of 3)
May/June 1983
By the Mother Earth News editors
Half of the required funds will come in the form of a short-term loan from NCCB, and more will be chipped in by outside investors who'll gain tax benefits. And of course, additional cash will be obtained from co-op members, each of whom will pay a $4-a-month equity fee as well as the $10 basic service charge. (A member who leaves the system can have his or her accumulated equity re funded.) However, despite such groundwork, the Davis system has a number of hurdles to overcome before it can be declared successful.
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"For one thing," Kahn points out, "a survey found that the typical Davis resident watches television only half as much as does the average American, so we're not sure how many people in the area will subscribe to the service. This is, you see, an intellectual community, and we have a mild climate, so people are outdoors a lot of the time."
Judy Corbett, chairperson of DCC, disagrees, stating that the same survey found "the percentage of people in Davis who are interested in cable is greater than the national average. It's not that they dislike television... only what's on it now. And DCC is planning to devote a very high 6% of its revenues for local programming, while also tapping into the best that satellite broadcasting systems have to offer."
But Bud Wagner of Malarkey-Taylor Associates, who is a 13-year veteran of the cable industry, identifies another potential problem.
"College students represent a large portion of the population here, and we don't know whether they'll be steady customers for these services. Besides," he adds, "we wonder whether a very expensive, state-of-the-art system can be commercially successful in a town—with a small population—where such a high proportion of the cable must be laid underground."
This is definitely a consideration, too, because the installation of underground cable costs $40,000 a mile as compared with $14,000/mile for aboveground lines. And half of all the cable for the 14,500-household Davis system must go underground. Additionally, while rural cooperative systems usually offer 12 channels, the California community plans to have 52.
