Charter Communications has launched six new high-definition channels to West Michigan subscribers. Charter subscribers
Charter Michigan HD Channels

St.Louis Business Journal reports -

Eight months after filing, Charter Communications Inc. said Monday it has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with $8 billion less debt. Judge James Peck in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York approved the pre-arranged financial restructuring Nov. 17, which was filed March 27 and considered one of the nation’s largest and most complex. Through the plan, Charter, the fourth-largest U.S. cable operator, will shave off $8 billion from the $21 billion debt it took on through acquisitions and service upgrades to compete with larger rivals. The company, which has 5.3 million customers and reported a loss every year since going public in 1999, said it expects to generate positive free cash flow through the reduction of more than $830 million in annual interest expense. Charter’s plan generates $1.6 billion in proceeds from an equity rights offering; reinstates $11.4 billion of its senior bank debt at below-market rates; and gives Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen the largest voting interest at 35 percent.

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photo:NYTIMES

article: Brad Stone

“Tuesday was another typical day for John Chow, blogger and Internet entrepreneur in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Chow treated his 50,000 Twitter followers to a photograph of his lunch (barbecued chicken and French fries), discussed the weather in Vancouver and linked to a new post on his Internet business blog.

Then he earned $200 by telling his fans where they could buy M&M’s with customized faces, messages and colors.

Mr. Chow is among a growing group of celebrities, bloggers and regular Internet users who are allowing advertisers to send commercial messages to their personal contacts on social networks. For the last month, he has used the services of Ad.ly, a start-up based in Los Angeles, and Izea, based in Orlando, Fla., to periodically surrender his Twitter stream to the likes of Charter Communications, the Make a Wish Foundation and an online seminar about working from home.
In October, Mr. Chow’s income from Twitter ads was around $3,000. “I get paid for pushing a button,” he said.

It is perhaps the last frontier in advertising — getting regular people to send a sentence or two of text, on behalf of paying advertisers, to their friends and admirers. The idea, according to the entrepreneurs who are developing such services for Twitter and other Web networks, is that people trust recommendations from those they know and respect, while they increasingly ignore nearly ever other kind of ad message in print, on television and online.

Even the Internet giants are warming to the idea of harnessing informal chats between friends to promote their products and services. This month, Amazon.com said it would start paying commissions to individuals who refer buyers to the site via Twitter messages. (People must first sign up for Amazon Associates, a program in which Amazon pays Web publishers for referrals to its site.)

But the bigger opportunity may be in matching advertisers with so-called influencers — the more popular users of services like Twitter. A number of start-ups, like Ad.ly, Izea and Peer2, a division of Creative Asylum, a Hollywood ad agency, are pursuing the opportunity to put persuasive messages into regular dialogue on social networks.

“We don’t want to create an army of spammers, and we are not trying to turn Facebookand Twitter into one giant spam network,” said Joey Caroni, co-founder of Peer2. “All we are trying to do is get consumers to become marketers for us.”

For the most popular celebrities and bloggers on Twitter, such advertising can generate a surprisingly sizable payday. Ad.ly and Izea, which runs a service called Sponsored Tweets, say celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Dr. Drew and the musician Ernie Halter can earn up to $10,000 by sending a single message to their hundreds of thousands of followers. (Sample ad Tweet from Mr. Halter, which included a link: “sponsored: yo! cheese doodles is giving away sweet prizes in the “rock the cheese” video contest. Check it!”)

Izea receives at least 15 percent of the advertiser’s payment to more popular Twitter users, and up to half for the less distinguished. Ad.ly takes a 30 percent cut across the board. While both companies note their celebrity connections and the involvement of big advertisers like Microsoft and NBC, they really salivate at the prospect of marrying less notable Internet personalities with the huge pool of smaller advertisers.

For example, an expert on cycling, with 1,000 Twitter followers, might agree to send an ad about a new bike helmet — a message that might well be implicitly trusted by his followers.
One problem is that many Internet users eschew the idea of these ads, saying they commercialize authentic dialogue and undermine people’s credibility. “It interferes with your relationship with your friends and your audience,” said Robert Scoble, a technology blogger with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter, who says he “unfollows” people on Twitter who send him ads.

Facebook does not allow members to insert paid ads into status updates or profiles. “For us, it goes against the authenticity of the page,” said Brandon McCormick, a Facebook spokesman. Peer2 gets around the ban by offering users points instead of dollars; points are redeemable for Amazon products.

Part of the unease with this emerging form of advertising is rooted in the past. Three years ago, with a service called PayPerPost, Izea paid bloggers to pitch products to their readers. The endorsements were not clearly labeled as ads, and the service kicked up a dust storm of criticism in the blogosphere.

Ted Murphy, the C.E.O. of Izea, now a 30-person business backed by $10 million inventure capital, said the company initially “made a big mistake” by not setting disclosure standards for publishers and advertisers. Today, ad networks promote their standards; Izea’s ads on Twitter are typically demarcated with signifiers like “#ad” or “#sponsor.”

ONE new company trying to add transparency to the business is Likes.com of San Francisco, which plans to introduce its ad network in December. The company encourages bloggers and Twitter users to specify their tastes in restaurants, movies, books and other products, and then to publish those recommendations to their blogs and social network pages.

Advertisers can then see who has favored their products in the past, and how effective their recommendations have been at getting people to click on links. Depending on the advertiser, bloggers and Tweeters will be paid for every ad they send out, or every time someone clicks on the link.

Every Likes.com ad is clearly labeled as such, and once people click on a link, they are taken to another page that is also clearly labeled as a sponsorship. People are limited to posting an ad from Likes.com once every other day.

“We are trying to limit it, to prevent people from losing their following,” said Bindu Reddy, a former Google product manager who started the company with her husband, Arvind Sundararajan, a former Google engineer. “We know people are queasy about this.”

This is actually brilliant!

Well, if only i have that social position that Mr. Chow has. Its actually a practical business solution to let the word out (that is how i define an ad– mind you!), a perfect marketing strategy which has relatively small overhead cost but reaches the right audience (the twitter followers) targeted by the advertisers through this exploited channel.

So its not surprising that one of these days we can see a precipitous increase of people who want to earn money by wielding this new format to their already established venture (i.e. Google Ads)

Lucky for those who has a gazillion followers down their line.

SIUE sports information announced yesterday an agreement has been made with Charter Communications to air ten SIUE basketball games LIVE from the Vadalabene Center.

This is great news for the university, considering Charter reaches half a million homes in the St. Louis area, and the television contract will allow SIUE to further branch out into the St. Louis market, and put itself into the local college hoops conversation with Missouri, Illinois and SLU.

Don’t know the cost, or any specifics regarding the contract, besides the games will air on Channel 3, the Charter Communications Information Network (basically the public access channel, but it’s a channel nonetheless) as they happen and again in tape delay, Randy Karraker, a well known St. Louis media personality will be doing the play by play, and ten games, including the home openers are set to be broadcast.

This boosts SIUE’s television exposure this season to 12 games, Friday’s men’s opener at the University of Illinois will air on ESPN360.com (also a part of ESPN’s pay per view package on television, so I’m sure Charter will broadcast the feed live on television locally, as they did last season for a pair of games) and the Dec. 22 game at Purdue is on ESPNU.

That explains the new press conferences and confusion over media seating at the VC during the exhibition games. Should be a great thing for SIUE, hopefully it doesn’t take away from attendance at the games.

Here is Charter’s schedule for the season from the press release:

Date Opponent Game Time
Sun., Nov. 15 Milwaukee (W) Noon
Sun., Nov. 15 Illinois State (M) 2:30 p.m.
Sat., Nov. 28 Lipscomb (M) 2:00 p.m.
Sun., Dec. 20 Loyola (M) 2:00 p.m.
Tue., Dec. 22 Missouri State (W) 7:00 p.m.
Mon., Dec. 28 UMKC (M) 7:00 p.m.
Wed., Dec. 30 Murray State (M) 7:00 p.m.
Tue., Jan. 5 Milwaukee (M) 7:00 p.m.
Fri., Feb. 5 South Dakota (M) 7:00 p.m.
Sun., Feb. 7 North Dakota (M) 1:30 p.m.

Headed to the U of I tomorrow around two with T.J, should be fun, be sure to keep up with the live blog during the game, and as you watch online. Instead of blogging straight into this we will have a link available around 6 p.m with cover it live, so you can interact and ask questions about the game as it happens or share your input. Much more interactive approach, hope you join us!

Allan Lewis
Alestle Sports Editor

We all work very hard, day-in and day-out, trying to improve our marketing and promotions. Rarely, however, do we get to point to very clear, exceptional results that definitively indicate a resounding success.

Applying their talents for creating compelling sales messages, calls-to-action, and fluid, fun, and addictive user interfaces, creativeLIFT delivered an exceptional application. For our part, Knotice’s brilliant development team and technical project managers provided a robust infrastructure tapping into several of Charter’s systems to allow for the order customization and shopping cart checkout. The total package is comprehensive but still flexible, with iterations used today for landing pages and sundry other tasks and applications.

And, about that resounding success. The Bundle Builder application proved its value to the consumer – and to the client’s bottom line – with some enviable statistics indicating true lift. (Stats are from the spring of 2009.)

• 8% conversion rate, representing a 400% lift over the legacy buyflow application
• 83% of orders are for greater amounts than average orders with the legacy buyflow
• 28% increase in products per order, from 1.85 to 2.37

The Bundle Builder is a perfect example of how a superior concept can act as firm bedrock for organizational collaboration and execution, transforming an online experience from a liability to an asset. Most importantly, the application and its tremendous success illustrate how a fantastic consumer shopping experience can make all the difference.

It is no surprise that the Bundle Builder application is a finalist for the prestigious Mark Awards, which recognize marketing and sales achievement within the Cable, Broadband and Telecommunications industry. The Mark Awards will be presented Monday, October 26th, during the CTAM Summit in Denver.

We have our fingers crossed, but delivering tremendous bottom-line results while delivering a consumer-friendly experience seems to be the win-win scenario that defines marketing excellence.

This post addresses something that has bothered me for years. In fact, I blogged about it way back in the late 1990’s. OK, I admit, I didn’t call it a “blog” back then. But I did have a section of what I called my “home page” (aka web site) where I ranted about various things. The topic of this posting was one of them.

Ever notice how television commercials are louder than regular programming? I noticed it and complained about it over 10 years ago and it still bothers me to this day. And lately I’ve been noticing it get worse. A lot worse.

I’ve known about the existence of a weak-assed mythical law or FCC regulation for a long time now that pretends to do something about this problem (but fails miserably). I’ve never been able to actually find a copy of it on the FCC web site, but it allegedly exists. You can find lots of web pages that mention it. Of course, since industry broadcasters probably wrote the damn thing themselves before handing it over to the FCC, the thing is so watered down and weak that it gives them the power to do exactly what they want. (I imagine this is how most attempts by government to regulate big business probably turn out.)

The FCC’s weak rule is this: The peak volume of television advertisements cannot be louder than the peak volume of regular programming. That’s it in a nutshell and it sounds pretty good, right?

Wrong. It turns out this little rule basically has what I’d call a titanic loophole. Broadcasters simply keep the average volume for regular programming lower than commercials. In this way they can meet the letter of the law while still blasting commercials so loud that they’ll blow your socks off.

By the way, when I’m talking about the FCC, I’m obviously talking about the United States. But other countries have this problem, too. Take Italy, for example, where a 2006 study determined that the volume level of 83% of the ads on their major networks were up to 50 percent higher.

Herb Weisbaum explains it much better than I can:

The Federal Communications Commission does not specifically regulate the volume of TV programs or TV commercials. However, broadcasters are required to have equipment that limits the peak power they can use to send out their audio and video signals. That means the loudest TV commercial will never be any louder than the loudest part of any TV program.

Weisbaum goes on to say:

Most advertisers don’t want nuance. They want to grab your attention. To do that, the audio track is electronically processed to make every part of it as loud as possible within legal limits. “Nothing is allowed to be subtle,” says Brian Dooley, Editor-At-Large for CNET.com. “Everything is loud – the voices, the music and the sound effects.”

So that’s how the evil bastards do it. And, of course, like always, it’s the unholy pursuit of profits at any costs that drives them to do this.

Amazingly, after all this time of doing what they want, something may actually be done about this soon. In a story published just a couple weeks ago, there may actually be an effort underway to reduce the volume of TV ads.

Apparently this effort is prompted by “thousands” of yearly complaints. And the problem affects FM radio as well as “analog TV.”

A technical organization that sets standards for digital TV broadcasters moved forward on Sept. 16 [2009] with new recommendations that may finally dial down the volume of these obnoxious ads.

According to the article any recommendations made by that technical organization must still be approved by broadcasters, so this effort may already be doomed. And even if approved it may be weakened to the point of inane hilarity. But we can hope.

I also wonder what will be done, if anything, about other places where this is a problem. I’m talking about video on the internet and “on demand” with your cable provider. I recently had to watch an episode of Amazing Race on CBS.com because I had missed the regular broadcast. It was nice to be able to catch up on a show I missed, but the commercials were insanely loud. CBS took the concept of blasting commercials and ramped it up to a whole ‘nother level. It is sort of like trying to open a peanut with a sledgehammer. Yeah, they are just that subtle. I ended up being motivated enough to MUTE every CBS.com commercial just out of spite. That’ll teach ‘em!

Then I noticed the same thing happening with Charter Communication’s “On Demand” service. Just touching the “On Demand” button on the remote control practically doubles the volume. My speakers were so overloaded I could actually hear the static. Of course, Charter is one of the worst companies in the known universe so this didn’t surprise me in the least.

So here’s hoping that somehow, against all odds, the evil frickin’ bastards can be reigned in and forced to toss the consumers that make their existence possible a little bone. I guess in theory, in some parallel universe, maybe in a test tube … it could happen. Naw.

Charter, oh Charter! How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

It’s always high drama with Charter and has been for years. I can say with conviction and gusto that Charter Communications is the worst company I’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Bar none.

The most recent fiasco involves Charter Quick Pay or ePay or whatever they’re calling it this week. I used Quick Pay and it said my payment was accepted. Then I waited. And waited some more. Day after day the payment never showed up on either Charter’s web site or my bank statement. Finally I gave in and made the call I was dreading to find out what went wrong.

Cue the employee with an accent…

Long story short, Charter’s customer service representative was unable to offer any explanation why the payment failed short of “it didn’t go through.” Well, was it declined? They couldn’t say. I had plenty of money in my bank. As far as I could tell, I didn’t do anything wrong.

Then they told me I was being charged a $25 fee because the charge didn’t go through. What the hell?!?!? I tried to get any kind of useful information from the phone call but the person on the other end was a total idiot. Finally out of frustration I asked, “where are you, anyway?” Answer: Panama City, Panama. The phone call was going nowhere and finally ended with absolutely nothing accomplished.

I still don’t know what’s going to happen with my $25 dispute with Charter. One option I’m seriously considering is switching my internet to another provider and living without TV. Opting out is often the only form of viable protest left for an angry costumer. I’ll dispute the charge and Charter will respond by using the only leverage they’ve got – turning off my service. Then they’ll ding my credit report about a million times and eventually turn it over to a collection agency for a while. I will dispute the charge every step of the way. I’ll never give in and I’ll never pay the charge, damn them!

This is just another example of what I call “gold nugget economics” (which I will explain in a blog posting coming soon). Companies like Charter and banks are frothing at the mouth for the chance to slap fees on your ass. It amazes me the way they want to treat their customers just so they can make a quick buck. They think they’ve got you by the balls, which is the only reason they’d even attempt shit like that. Finding another company is not very fun, but it is an option, and so is opting out.

Anyway, I decided to do a little research into Charter’s “call centers.” According to Wikipedia, Charter announced in 2006 it would be closing seven call centers in the United States. Meanwhile it was outsourcing new call centers in places like the Philippines, Mexico, London, Canada, Brazil and, yes, even Panama City, Panama. Charter still has some call centers in the United States, but after searching the internet it is unclear what portion of that workforce is represented by Americans. Damn anti-American company!

“We don’t want to give Americans jobs, but we do want Americans to be our customers and pay top dollar for our shit.” Services like “on demand” which are buggy as hell. What a friggin’ joke.

Here’s the thing about this sort of outsourcing that I don’t get. Companies like Charter clearly want U.S. customers paying their exorbitant service rates using dollars. But they aren’t willing to employ U.S. workers and they send their jobs outside of U.S. borders. Laughably, even by trimming their compensation costs by outsourcing they weren’t clever enough to avoid bankruptcy, though. The savings probably all got blown on overpaying their brilliant “executives” who screwed the company into bankruptcy in the first place.

Question for ya Charter. If U.S. companies won’t give U.S. employees jobs, how are they going to come up with the dollars you’re frothing for to fill up your coffers? Quite the conundrum, eh?

Yes, outsourcing can provide short-term savings to a company, but it may have a long-term effect on the sustainability of a company when customer service gets flushed down the toilet. A 2009 J.D. Power survey found the Charter Communications was “below average” in the U.S. for customer service. As far as I can tell, it came in last place in every market where it has a presence. I then went to the J.D. Power web site and surfed the 2008 survey results and it appears that Charter Communications received the lowest ratings in every possible category. Even I have to admit that is quite the accomplishment.

Well done, asshats!

Is $25 worth losing a customer for life? You tell me, Charter idiots!

Friday, August 28 was truly a momentous day which I will forever remember for accomplishing one of my life’s greatest feats.  I’m actually not talking about finishing UW Marching Band Reg Week – which is the most physically demanding tryout week I have ever had to endure (much harder in fact than varsity football two-a-days).  I was happy that the days of six hour rehearsals and conditioning in the middle of August were over and regular rehearsal schedules would begin.  My much greater accomplishment, however, was managing to free myself of Madison’s own axis of evil, the Fourth Reich - Charter Communications.  Here are my own opinions why Charter is a terrible company and as I found, I’m evidently not alone.

1. Calling their customer service requires reading minds better than even Miss Cleo is capable.  Figuring out what I needed to say to their automated voice recognition software to actually talk to a human being took me 15 minutes.
2. I received junk mail about the charter bundle seven days a week – sometimes more than one letter a day – because Charter never removed past customers from my college address.  On more than one occasion I even threw away a bill because I thought it was more junk mail.  A company that knows anything about marketing should realize that convincing college students that they need a Landline would be an incredible accomplishment.
3. Figuring out what all of the charges, sub-charges, and sub-sub-charges on a bill actually mean is more confusing than computer science.  I had no idea what I was actually paying for and costs continually increased from month to month without Charter informing me.  Disputing these charges requires an hour long phone call (see #1) or threatening to switch to Direct TV.
4. Question: How hard is it to remove someone from an account?  Answer: Three phone calls and an eventual “required” trip to an actual Charter office.  This is something that should be easily done over the phone or the interweb.  Instead, we were told by two Charter employees that all I had to do was call and provide my SSN.  When I did that, the customer service “expert” told me that “no one would have told me that it was possible over the phone” and “sir, I’ve been working for Charter for 14 years, I think I know how to remove someone from an account.”  I think the only thing worse than being a Charter customer would probably be working 14 miserable years for the company…

What if I lived my life like Charter runs their business?

• When people owe me money, provide them with a list of chargeable sub-items which they do not understand.  For example, if I bought someone a beer at a bar, I would probably charge them for an intoxication fee, a money handling fee, a non-local beer fee (if it was an Anheuser Busch product), a pint glass renters fee, hangover insurance, and even a falangy fee (made up).
• Schedule appointments with people stating that I will arrive between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM.
• Constantly tell people how much money they could be saving if they bought two things that they don’t need and one that they actually do.
• Perform with mediocrity at both work and school, treat others as if they are indebted to me for the mediocre work, and then when I’m asked about it, provide people with a recording stating that my work isn’t actually mediocre.

Truthfully, I don’t believe Charter will be around long and hopefully filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 28, 2009 will speed up the process.  Much like AOL in the 90s, who once owned a large share of the internet market (cancelling an account with AOL literally took four hours – I remember doing it because my Dad didn’t have time), new players will come along, providing better customer service and a better product.  For example, AT&T has started providing cable and internet in Madison at a cheaper rate and seems like a much better option.

Charter Communications has added four new high-definition channels to its subscribers in Beaufort, Hilton Head Island and Bluffton, SC. Charter has launched following HD channels
Charter South Carolina HD channels

Charter Communications has launched nine new high-definition channels to its subscribers in Greenville, Laurens, Anderson and Spartanburg in South Carolina programming line up beginning
Charter Carolina HD Channels

“The Missouri Supreme Court has given new life to a class action against Charter Communications. Charter customers claimed the cable provider illegally charged them for a TV guide channel they didn’t request. “

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