THE GIFT OF HTS IN ROANOKE VALLEY

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992                   TAG: 9202090047
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: D10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
THE GIFT OF HTS IN ROANOKE VALLEY
To Jack Bogaczyk:
I would like to join you in wishing that Roanoke Valley Cablevision [Cox Cable Roanoke] would give the gift of Home Team Sports to their subscribers this year. It is beyond me why this service is not already available in the Roanoke area. HTS covers the closest thing we have to professional "home teams" in our area (I am not counting the Charlotte Hornets because the jury is still out on whether they should be called a "professional" team), but while the people in Dublin, Blacksburg and Rocky Mount can get it, people in Roanoke cannot.
Sure, we do get SportsChannel on the weekend, but a fellow can only watch "This Week in Field Hockey" and "Pole Vaulting Review" for so long. Honestly, their programming, with the exception of NHL hockey, is worse than ESPN's was when they first went on the air. A while back, when Roanoke cable customers were privileged enough to have WJPR (Fox) on not one, but two channels, I called [Cox Cable] to inquire about the possibility of getting HTS on to replace one of the Fox channels. I spoke with the manager and he told me that sports programming was not a high priority. He said that, based on their customer surveys, the top requests were for more religious and more self-improvement/educational programming.
You can imagine how surprised I was to open my cable bill and see [Cox Cable] proudly announcing that they were replacing one of the Fox channels with The Comedy Channel. Religious programming? Hardly. Educational programming? Well, maybe to some of the folks at [Cox Cable].
D.W. HACKETT ROANOKE

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB