Super Sunday is silent in many cable TV homes

Thousands of cable customers across the Kansas City area were faced with calling up friends and hastily moving their Super Bowl parties after realizing that cable service would not be restored by game time. As many as 50,000 area homes were without service at kickoff time, despite round-the-clock efforts by Time Warner Cable and Comcast Cable after last week's ice storm. Employees gave up their weekends, the companies called in outside contractors and hundreds of employees drove in from Time Warner and Comcast operations in Indianapolis, Little Rock, Ark., and elsewhere. Undoing the storm's wrath in less than four days, however, proved to be too much. Time Warner's problem was twofold: First, power had to be restored to the hubs that deliver cable and high-speed Internet to neighborhoods. Also, about 20,000 individual homes had downed cable lines somewhere between the hub and their doorstep. All employees worked over the weekend to restore service, said company Vice President Carol Rothwell, and about 12,000 homes got their cable back. But Rothwell said it would take "several more days" to replace all the downed lines between the poles and the homes. Many customers still do not have power, let alone cable television. "I used to say, 'Well, that's why God invented sports bars,' but then several of them don't have power either," Rothwell said. Comcast had backup generators at its hubs, but still a third of its customers, or 34,000 homes, lost their cable at the ice storm's peak. A majority of those who lost service now have it back, according to company spokesman Tom Krewson. He couldn't estimate how much longer it would take to restore service to all homes. You can reach Aaron Barnhart through the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com.