Cable

About a dozen tea party activists from the Philadelphia area gathered outside the Kimmel Center on Wednesday - site of Comcast Corp.'s annual shareholders' meeting - to protest the company's ownership of the liberal-leaning MSNBC 24-hour cable news channel. Inside the meeting, shareholders peppered Comcast chief executive officer Brian Roberts about the company's decision to ban local gun-shop advertisements. There were also complaints about the Rev. Al Sharpton, host of PoliticsNation on MSNBC.

When I turned on the television and the picture quality was so poor that Lawrence Welk looked like Pamela Anderson, I told myself that things would eventually get better. When my children couldn't see "Mama's Family" through blizzardlike screen interference, I convinced them to turn it off and watch Solomon's Family instead. When my wife, LaVeta, said that she considered public television stations to be premium channels, I knew she was putting a happy face on our sad situation.

Q: I recently went shopping for a cable-ready TV. A salesman told me there's "no such thing" anymore. What gives? A: New Federal Communications Commission guidelines for cable TV and consumer electronics compatibility went into effect Nov. 1, and no manufacturer yet met them. In fact, the cable and electronics industries are still hammering out details as to how they're going to "interface" their products so you won't need to use a separate descrambler box and two remote controls to tune in shows.

WASHINGTON - Relations between Venezuela and the United States sank so low in recent years that even a McDonald's combo meal and a two-for-one offer from Domino's Pizza were the subject of acrimony. The tale of the fast-food kerfuffle is one of a multitude of snapshots offered by U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and released to McClatchy Newspapers that shed light on steadily rising tensions between the United States and the government of fiery populist Hugo Chavez. Many of the snapshots are of singular events such as a tussle over a diplomatic pouch, the parsing of an insult by Chavez, and the travails of U.S. companies operating in Venezuela.

Has it really been 10 years? Wasn't it only yesterday that cable TV graduated from rural areas to start saturating America, and started making an endless stream of thus-far unfulfilled promises? Prism celebrates its 10th anniversary Monday, an impressive success story in a field littered with the graves of regional and national "premium" services. HBO, as a national cable network, marked its 10th anniversary a year ago and this week celebrates the 10th anniversary of its oldest regular series, Inside the NFL. The success of both of these operations is due in no small part to the unswerving loyalty and unquenchable appetites of sports enthusiasts.

After completing its most successful summer season ever, cable television is aiming for an auspicious autumn that will entice even more viewers to its improving attractions. For two weeks in June and again for two weeks in July, the combined audience for cable channels outnumbered the total viewers for the six broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN, and WB. That never happened before in TV history. With more than 20 channels now posting solid annual profits, cable has more money than ever to buy better scripts and hire higher-profile stars.

Look for the 76ers to settle their television contract situation this week with a revised schedule that will leave just seven regular-season games on free broadcast for the 1991-92 season. According to sources close to the negotiations, WPHL-TV (Channel 17) has been cut into the new deal for those seven games as the Sixers try to avoid the public relations fallout from going totally cable. As in the past, Prism will carry all home games not blacked out by national television, and in the new alignment, Prism and its sister station, SportsChannel, will split the 34 road games left after WPHL's token allotment.

Two big-money Michaels - Jackson and Milken - are joining forces to create an educational TV cable network, the junk-bond king's spokeswoman announced yesterday in L.A. "He wants to put on programs . . . everything from pre- school to job training, cradle to retirement," she said. Thursday, in his first public appearance since leaving prison and completing a halfway house stint this month, Milken - who is battling prostate cancer - addressed an educational conference sponsored by his Milken Family Foundation.

An opulent biography of groundbreaking entertainer Josephine Baker, documentaries shot in contemporary Cuba and inside a Pennsylvania prison, and musical specials ranging from opera to rock are among the highlights scheduled on cable television during the next three months. Here, in chronological order, are 16 cable attractions slated for February, March and April: SWAMP THING. (10:30 p.m. Friday, USA.) The weekly series, a hit since it premiered on Sept. 7, returns with nine new episodes.

No matter how you slice it, the broadcast networks are losing ground to cable television this season. According to Nielsen figures for February, the ratings for the Big Three networks were off roughly 10 percent from the same period in 1993. (Because of the Winter Olympics last year, the February '94 ratings make for an unfair comparison.) While the broadcast networks' ratings were dropping, the basic-cable networks' were rising. Basic-cable ratings in February were up 16 percent from February 1993.

About a dozen tea party activists from the Philadelphia area gathered outside the Kimmel Center on Wednesday - site of Comcast Corp.'s annual shareholders' meeting - to protest the company's ownership of the liberal-leaning MSNBC 24-hour cable news channel. Inside the meeting, shareholders peppered Comcast chief executive officer Brian Roberts about the company's decision to ban local gun-shop advertisements. There were also complaints about the Rev. Al Sharpton, host of PoliticsNation on MSNBC.

WASHINGTON - Americans are at a "tipping point" as it regards their monthly pay-TV bill and should be given the option of purchasing channels individually instead of as a bundle with hundreds of channels, Arizona Sen. John McCain told a Senate panel Tuesday. "I truly believe that a lot of Americans are fed up with their cable TV bills," said McCain, speaking to a Commerce subcommittee exploring the status of the TV and video industries in the United States. McCain was speaking to rally political support for the Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013 that he proposed last week.

YOU REMEMBER that girl you knew in high school? You know, the pretty one who was smarter, more social and more active than anyone else. There might be a touch of envy in your recollection, but she was the one you can't forget. Meet Betty Butler. "During her school years, she became known as the smart, pretty girl who could read, write and talk circles around anyone," her family said. "She devoured books and loved learning. " Elizabeth McCormick, as she became after marrying Steven McCormick, carried those traits through a life of action and creativity.

NEW YORK - The Final Four's first two games are moving to cable TV next year. The national semifinals will be televised on TBS in 2014 and 2015, with the championship game remaining on CBS, the companies said Tuesday. Under the 14-year deal that CBS and Turner Sports signed with the NCAA in 2010, CBS and TBS were scheduled to start alternating telecasts of the entire Final Four starting in 2016, but Turner had the option to move that up to 2014. Network executives decided in recent months that the best approach for both companies was to split the coverage for the next two years before beginning to take turns.

Cathy Avgiris, daughter of a Greek carpenter and a seamstress from Brooklyn, keeps climbing the corporate ladder at Comcast Corp. The 53-year-old executive, who helped launch the company's Internet and phone business, has been promoted to chief financial officer of its cable division, a business that serves 22 million cable-TV subscribers and has a projected $40 billion in annual sales this year. The division is a source of much of Comcast's profits. Avgiris already is the top woman executive in the division, the nation's largest cable-TV provider.

Comcast Corp.'s Philadelphia cable-TV franchise agreement expires in late 2015. City officials say they will seek public comments over the next year as they negotiate a renewal with the nation's largest cable operator. Currently, Comcast offers TV, Internet, and phone services in the city. "A lot has happened in the last 15 years, and there is a lot to talk about," said Steven Robertson, deputy chief innovation officer for the city. "It's the beginning of the discussion. " The negotiations will be handled through the Office of Innovation and Technology.

Ready, set (as in TV set), binge! If you're the kind of person (and many of us are) who's tempted to do marathon viewing of a favorite show, you might want to rethink your plans for the last week of this month. As long as you're an Xfinity TV customer. Starting March 25, Comcast's Watchathon Week will offer FREE "access to over 3,500 episodes of 100 TV series across 25 premium, cable and broadcast networks," according to a news release. Included: -- "Almost the entire TV libraries of HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Cinemax," including The Sopranos, Sex & the City and The Wire , according to spokeswoman Jennifer Bilotta.

Starting in 2014, cable will be needed to watch much of the Major Leagues' postseason. Fox Sports 1, the new sports cable network launching in August, will join TBS in carrying the American League and National League Championship Series. In the past, all the Fox games would have aired along with American Idol and The Simpsons on the regular Fox Network. This move makes the World Series the only part of baseball's postseason on free TV completely.   Teixeira teed off Yankees slugger Mark Teixeira will miss the World Baseball Classic because of a strained right wrist.

Fox Sports Media Group, a division of News Corp., is elbowing into the national 24-hour cable sports arena with Fox Sports 1, which will debut Aug. 17. It had been one of the worst-kept secrets in the media business that Fox was planning a sports cable channel, as it acquired billions of dollars in TV sports rights over the last 16 months. The company officially disclosed the new channel at a New York media event Tuesday and said it would air NASCAR, Major League Baseball, college football and basketball, soccer, and Ultimate Fighting Championship events.

  Official: Computer cable used to kill woman Sabrina Bullock, the Woodbury woman whose body was found in a clothing collection bin early Monday, was killed with a computer keyboard cord, the spokesman for the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office said Wednesday. Harry John Neher, 32, who has been charged with first-degree murder in Bullock's death, ran a home-based computer business, said spokesman Bernie Weisenfeld. The body of Bullock, 41, was found in the clothing bin near the apartment where Neher lived on South Broad Street in Woodbury.