Written by: Brian Lofrumento

Students around campus dedicating their leisure time to watching television were greeted with an unwelcomed message in a white box just two weeks ago. Comcast is changing their broadcasting system for all cable subscribers, and as a result, our television lineup here on campus has changed – but only briefly. Students received an e-mail on February 22 from the Director of Housing and Student Systems, Ron Ardizzone, explaining the obtrusive white message and the subsequent changes to our cable service.

When all is said and done on March 23, when the old television channels will be reinstated, students don’t need to do anything special to get their old channel lineup back. It is recommended, however, that students do an auto-tune on their televisions to ensure all updates are recognized by their TV’s.

The biggest change in this new TV system, and the one that affects all students on campus, is the length of time that the twelve channels will be gone from our television lineup, which is from February 24 to March 23. The twelve channels temporarily lost are: HGTV, TNT, E!, Lifetime, TLC, the Weather Channel, AMC, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet, Versus, Food Network, and the Travel Channel.

Only a week into the new system, students have already indicated that the changes have affected them. “I missed one of the biggest games of the Celtics’ season last week when they played the Cavs,” said Taylor Fisher, a junior.

While the timing may not have been great, Housing did what it could to delay and lessen the impact of Comcast’s conversion process. It has prompted many students, though, to wonder why we couldn’t just add cable boxes and keep our current setup.

“If we distributed boxes to everybody, you’d all just have your same basic lineup you had,” said Ardizzone. “We said that didn’t make sense to buy all those boxes for four weeks, and one of those weeks is Spring Break. We tried to push them to wait until the end of the semester, but they said they were moving forward. It was either this or no cable.”

The other major change seen around campus is that students who previously had premium cable services from Comcast are being forced to turn in their boxes on March 24 in the Student Center. While this may be inconvenient for the one-hundred premium subscribers around campus, it was a necessary change to comply with Comcast’s policies so that the rest of campus could continue to enjoy cable.

Students around campus have indicated that they’d like to see the previous cable setup brought back, and administration agrees. “I’d like to see it brought back to normal,” pointed out Casey Millman, a junior. Ardizzone agreed, saying, “If I had my choice, I would have kept the status quo until at least the semester ended.”

One positive outcome from these changes is that when normal service resumes on March 23, students will notice at least one additional channel. “It’s going to be the same, if not one or two more channels,” said Ardizzone. “The one definitely is MSNBC.”