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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

Now, the city of New York could say: “If you want a franchise for the West Side, you've got to wire a third of the Bronx for free--furnish that program service to those people for free, in exchange for what you got in Staten Island or wherever you got another franchise.” That's one way to do it.

Even if you did that, cable is going to have a tough job in parts of the city, because--like it or not--a lot of the families steal the converter--the box you've got to put into the home. And if they steal that--I think those cost $150 to $165. There's a black market in them right now, and where does it come from? It comes from the boxes that are stolen.

Also, in the poorer parts of the city, I would think there would be a greater temptation-- maybe not--maybe it's true in the wealthier parts of the city as well. People will steal the program service. When my friend moved into her new apartment on the West Side, the people who had moved out had had cable. Why the connection was there, I don't know, but I just picked it up and connected it to the set, and she had cable service, in effect, free, because there was never any connection made.

She didn't continue to do that, but that could be done. And there are plenty of places in Florida where we had--what do you call them--a lot of one-story cottages in a little community. They had one service in with our line, and then wire everybody else. Well, we tried to collect from everybody else, but then we find that somebody steals from that wire and wires everybody else. So they pay him $1 a month, instead of paying us $15.95, and we're out of business.





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