Portland Observar October 9. 1980 Paga 11
Who?
Cablesystems Pacific
Here's why:
Cablesystems Pacific — the unanimous choice.
In March, 1979, Mayor Connie McCready named nine Portland residents to a Citizens' Cable Task Force.
Five of them had been members of the 1972-73 Cable Advisory Committee to city-county government. These
unpaid volunteers devoted 1200 hours to study, and 30 public meetings, evaluating four applicant firms which
applied for the city's franchise to serve eastside Portland, and possibly the city as a whole, with cable
television. After 16 months of deliberations, the Task Force members recommended
"...a clear choice...we mean our recommendation to be taken as a strong
and decided preference for Cablesystems Pacific.”
Cablesystems Pacific — a Portland partnership.
Forty distinguished Portlanders own 50% of Cableystems Pacific. They bought that ownership with their
own funds. Our seven-person Board of Directors will have four members appointed locally, and Portlanders will
hold a majority on the Board.
For almost a year, every step we have taken in preparing programming and community service details to meet
Portland needs has been based on suggestions from our 12-member Program Advisory Committee, an
unpaid team of outstanding Portland people whose sole interest has been to see that every segment
of this city's social, artistic, economic, spiritual, and educational population will have access to cable television
as a communications medium.
Cablesystems Pacific - established, experienced.
Our equal partner, Canadian Cablesystems, is the longest-established cablecaster in North America — in business
thirty years, operating the world's largest single cable system.
We of Cablesystems Pacific have established a strong piesence in the west, operating systems from
Orange County, California to Vancouver, B.C.
Our average system's size is four times that of any other applicant — Cablesystems serves an average
61,000 subscribers per area. And today, we've about 1 16 million subscribers in our twenty-five service areas
throughout Canada and the United States.
We won't be experimenting in Portland. The know how of Cablesystems' more than 100 employees will be
available to launch our Portland system - fast, efficiently, and at a modest cost.
Cablesystems Pacific -- first choice, first rate, in touch with the future.
Because there are thousands of pages of data to wade through in picking a good cable TV firm, the
Citizens' Cable Task Force used a neutral consulting firm, Telecommunications Management Corp,
of Los Angeles, to winnow out the essence of each applicant's proposal.
Last June, TMC's Carl Pilnick submitted his 106-page report, which gave Cablesystems the winning "score”
of 100% in terms of how we stacked up against competition in everything from legal and character
qualifications to number of home interactive services and rates.
That's at least some of the story behind the story — how we won the competition to bring Portland
108 channels of top TV entertainment and sports; spectacular movies, including those from Home Box Office
and Showtime; instant weather and consumer information; business, financial, national, and world news
channels; eight special channels for Portland's minorities, the arts, health, environment, government,
education, sports, and the deaf; ten Teleshopping channels for shopping-from-home; our fully-interactive
computerized data service called Telidon; and a security alarm system for burglary, fire, and medical
emergencies.
Of all the words written and spoken about this subject during the past sixteen months, we're proudest of these,
from the Citizens' Cable Task Force final report:
"The consultant's judgments and opinions are largely conditioned by technical considerations.
"Ours are conditioned by our acquired knowledge of cable communications,
but also by our sensitivity to the special character, experience, habits, and values
of the Portland community.”
In the years to come, we hope to contribute substantially to that "special character” which is
uniquely Portland's.
»cablesystems pacific
S uite 300, 620 S .W . 5th A v e n u e, P o rtlan d , O regon 97204
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