TCI to Reinstate MTV, VH-1 to Cable Systems

Buckling to consumer pressure, Tele-Communications Inc. has agreed to reinstate two music channels to several of its major cable systems after knocking them off this month, along with other channels it claimed had weak ratings.

The two music channels, Viacom’s VH-1 and MTV, are the latest services to be reinstated by TCI in response to public outcry at their removal.

TCI’s action demonstrates difficulties the nation’s largest cable company faces when altering its channel lineups to benefit networks in which it has ownership stakes.

The decision by TCI came just hours before a news conference scheduled by VH-1 in Denver on Wednesday to protest its removal from 350,000 households in Colorado and more than a million homes nationwide. Music stars Don Henley, Jewel, John Mellencamp and Tony Rich had flown in for the event, and the network also enlisted the support of a local radio station that had waged a listener campaign against TCI for pulling the channel in the Denver area.

“While we were flying here today, we received official word from TCI that both VH-1 and MTV will be fully restored on all TCI systems,” Henley said at the news conference.

VH-1 has 55 million subscribers and was harder hit by the TCI action. “The calls weren’t numerous but there was an intensity of feeling among loyal viewers that needed to be addressed,” said a spokesman.

TCI set off warfare with cable programmers when, without warning, it began dropping channels, including VH-1, MTV, Lifetime, the WGN superstation, Comedy Central and E!, in some of its systems to make room for new services that were offering to pay for carriage.

Typically, cable operators like TCI pay cable channels subscriber fees for programming. But a scarcity of channel capacity has prompted some new services to pay operators for carriage.

TCI, for one, replaced channels with such services as Discovery’s Animal Planet and Fox News. TCI’s affiliate, Liberty Media Corp., owns a stake in Discovery and has an option to buy equity in Fox News in exchange for cable coverage.

But in several cases, the plan backfired when customers protested the changes. WGN was reinstated in some markets after customer complaints that they no longer could get Chicago Bulls basketball games, which air on the superstation.