The rebels: Cable firms

It was the kind of thing that can give programmers ulcers and cost producers their jobs.

UC Berkeley's Bears were playing Washington State in one of the big Pac-10 games last season, and although they trailing by five points, they still had a shot at winning. Then, at exactly 11 p.m., with less than two minutes left in the game, San Francisco's Channel 35 switched to a local news talk show--its regularly scheduled programming.

Hundreds of calls flooded the cable station, which had been taken over by Tele-Communications Incorporated just two months earlier. But it was too late: The Bears had lost in the closing seconds after fumbling on the one-yard line.

And as angry as the Cal fans were, there wasn't much else they could do. Given that TCI controlled 90 percent of the market in the Bay Area, they could hardly threaten to move to another cable operator. As with most other parts of the country, the local cable franchise holds a virtual monopoly at the regional level, unchallenged largely because of the high cost of laying coaxial and other types of industrial-strength lines that can carry video.

Common carrier A company that agrees to provide service to anyone until its network has reached capacity-- that is, the firm doesn't hold out for more profitable customers.

"Nobody has a choice, anywhere. There are only a handful of cities around the country where there is real competition, with more than one cable purveyor," said Sylvia Siegel, founder of Cable Cops, a statewide non-profit consumer advocacy based in Mill Valley, California. "Deregulation has just not been good for consumers. All in all, they are getting shafted."

TCI's dominance in that market underscores one of the strongest criticisms of the Telecommunications Act of 1996: Instead of encouraging more competition through deregulation, critics say, the law is accomplishing just the opposite, creating unprecedented mergers and consolidation in the last year alone.

Industry executives and government officials stress that it is far too soon to declare the legislation a failure. As they point out, history shows that deregulation typically takes years, if not decades, before true competition emerges and consumers begin to benefit from it.

"It's very easy to get caught up in the notion that we should be providing competition in everything to everyone," TCI senior vice president Bob Thomson said from corporate headquarters in Denver. "If you think all these big capital-intensive companies know which way to go, you're dreaming."