CUBA NEWS Yahoo!
Company anti-theft effort pulls plug
on TV in Cuba
By JOHN RICE, Associated
Press Writer. Sun May 16, 1:32 PM ET
HAVANA - The U.S. government believes Cubans
should see more of America on television,
and for years, Cubans have been happily
complying - cobbling together clandestine
satellite systems to pick up everything
from the World Series (news - web sites)
to soap operas. No longer. Most of these
systems have been silenced - not by Fidel
Castro but by an American company's war
on TV piracy.
"We're sad because we cannot reach
our people with so much happiness,"
said Crystal Larraondo, executive assistant
for Los Fonomemecos, the Miami-based Cuban-American
comedy team whose show was popular here.
In late April, DirecTV, based in El Segundo,
Calif., changed its decoder cards to halt
widespread piracy in the United States.
By chance, it knocked out most of Cuba's
pirates too.
Hans de Salas, research associate at the
University of Miami's Institute for Cuban
and Cuban-American studies, called it "an
unexpected gift for the Castro government."
But DirecTV had no choice but to go by
the book, said Robert G. Mercer, its public
relations director.
"While we understand they have a different
motivation than the individuals who are
stealing our signal in the U.S., they are
still receiving our programming without
our authorization and in a part of the world
where we do not have a license to operate,"
he told The Associated Press.
"We have an obligation to our legitimate
customers and programming partners to target
and take off-line anyone who is using an
illegally modified access card," he
said.
The few Cubans who use the Dish TV system
of U.S.-based EchoStar aren't yet affected,
and EchoStar spokesman Steve Cox wouldn't
reveal details about possible security updates
there. Shifting from DirecTV to Dish would
require a different decoder box - one of
the hardest pieces of TV hardware to obtain
here.
The U.S. government's Office of Cuba Broadcasting
targets the island with its own station,
Television Marti, but its broadcasts are
jammed by Castro's regime. It tried the
satellite route, but few Cubans can pick
up its signals, which use a different technology
and satellite from those used by DirecTV.
On May 6, President Bush promised $18 million
to transmit TV Marti from a U.S. military
aircraft - a measure that a commentator
on Cuban state television described as a
"prologue to war."
Official Cuba also has a term for vehemently
anti-communist material beamed at the island
- "media terrorism."
Anecdotal reports speak of about 10,000
satellite television dishes in Cuba, according
to Joe O'Connell, spokesman for the U.S.
government's International Broadcasting
Bureau, which oversees Television Marti,
among other operations.
Dishes serve entire families and extension
lines sometimes connect them to neighboring
houses. Taped programs renting for about
25 cents reach a still larger audience.
The government is determined to confine
Cubans to the state broadcasting system,
where Thursday night's 90-minute discussion
show was devoted to "Cuba confronting
the fascist policies of Bush."
Few Cubans will talk openly about the dishes:
They're strictly banned for homes and police
sometimes raid them to confiscate illegal
antennas and fine their owners.
Yet enough money trickles into private
hands from tourism and family abroad to
finance a multimillion-dollar hidden TV
industry.
It includes building or smuggling in satellite
dishes, counterfeiting access cards, renting
lines to neighbors and going door to door
renting and collecting tapes of popular
shows.
An antenna, decoder and counterfeited access
card cost $700 to $1,200, depending on scarcity,
according to several Cubans who have bought
or sold them. That limits the dishes to
those with a healthy supply of dollars.
A typical Cuban makes about $20 a month.
A man who says he has installed 95 satellite
dishes showed a reporter one hidden in a
rooftop water tank. From there, he pointed
to neighboring houses, counting nine other
hidden dishes.
Cubans say they have seen antennas concealed
behind apartment windows, in air conditioner
boxes, even in a pigsty.
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