Michael's Insight

New HD launched in Columbus, Evansville and Bowling Green

Yesterday, I announced some exciting new additions to our digital television product – new QuickView channels and Primetime On Demand. Today I have some more announcements for our customers in Columbus, Evansville/Henderson and Bowling Green.

As part of our continued commitment to deliver the highest quality HD channels, 6 new HD channels are now available in Columbus, 8 new HD channels are now available in Evansville/Henderson, and 4 new HD channels are now available in Bowling Green.

As you can probably imagine, customers contact us each day because they want more of the best HD channels available. The HD channels we’re announcing today are some of the most highly requested channels out there.

The new HD includes:

• Columbus - 6 new HD channels: Spike, Comedy Central, Hallmark, MTV, Nickelodeon and HD Pay per view.
• Evansville/Henderson - 8 new HD channels: Spike, Comedy Central, Hallmark, MSNBC, Cartoon Network, Golf, Fox Sports Ohio, and HD Pay per view
• Bowling Green - 4 new HD channels: Spike, Comedy Central, Hallmark and HD Pay per view.

Now, for those of you in other markets, rest assured that more HD is on the way. As many of you know, we’ve already announced plans to transition our Lexington and Northern Kentucky districts to an all-digital format. This will allow us to deliver around 100 of the best HD channels and a 50 Mbps broadband service, or even faster, in both of those areas. And I can tell you we’ve got really big things in store for Louisville, too.

We’ll have more on these fronts in the coming weeks.

New HD channels for Bowling Green and Columbus

Insight customers in Columbus, Ohio and Bowling Green, Kentucky now have three additional high definition channels on their lineup.

Sports fans in Bowling Green and Columbus can now experience NHL games, IndyCar racing, and a number of mixed martial arts competitions in high definition on Versus HD. Golfing enthusiasts will be treated to watching PGA Tour events in HD on Golf HD. And customers wanting the latest news from Hollywood and great pop culture reality programming now have E! Entertainment HD. Columbus and Bowling Green customers can find Versus HD on channel 971, Golf HD on channel 972, and E! Entertainment HD on channel 989.

While this announcement is good news for Insight customers in Bowling Green and Columbus, a number of Insight customers in other areas have asked about HD additions for their area here on this blog and over at Broadband Reports' forums.  We are completely committed to adding the HD channels you want and we are working very hard, behind the scenes to do that.  Adding HD channels is a complex process with many different ingredients - determining which channels customers want, freeing up the necessary bandwidth to add channels, and creating agreements with programmers to offer new channels.

Rest assured that if you're an Insight customer - we're hard at work every day to bring you new HD channels.  During 2010, every Insight district will see some exciting new HD channels launched so stay tuned here for announcements about launches in your area. 

Only 3.3 million Amercian homes unprepared for DTV

Fewer than 3% of U.S. Homes Unready for Digital TV Transition [Nielsen Wire]

We're just a few short weeks away from the nation's transition from analog television broadcasts to digital. And even though over 40 percent of broadcast stations have already transitioned, there are still millions of Americans who aren't yet ready for the transition. As they have for several months now, The Nielsen Company has released May's count of households that are still unprepared for DTV. This month's count totals 3.3 million U.S. households.

While that is still a large number of Americans that are heading for a static filled screen after June 12th, it's a number that has slowly worked itself lower and lower over the past five months. On February 15th, just before the originally planned deadline, just over 5 million American homes remained unprepared. And at this point, the unprepared homes represent less than 3 percent of households nationally.

From a regional standpoint, within the Insight footprint, the two reported metro areas in Nielsen's count -- Columbus, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky -- report better than average DTV preparedness rates. In Louisville, 2.42 percent of homes still need to get ready for digital television. In Columbus, only 1.51 percent of households aren't prepared.

If you're one of the few DTV holdouts that hasn't resigned yourself to watching static after the digital transition, there's still time to give Insight a call. We're ready to be your DTV solution, helping get all your televisions connected to cable, preparing you for the digital transition. And remember, even if you're ready on your main TV, all the analog televisions in your home needs a solution if you want to keep using them after June 12th.

Columbus television station profiles savings by bundling cable services

Bundle Packages Can Lead To Cable Savings [WBNS 10 TV - Columbus, Ohio]

Columbus television station WBNS did a story last night on cable customers in that market who are saving money by bundling their cable television with broadband Internet and home phone. With the economic downturn, many consumer are looking to save money in many areas of their household budget, and this story outlines one way they can.

Though the cable customer in this story uses a different provider, he says that by bundling all three services together, he manages to save $800 over the course of a year on all three bills. And even though he's a Time Warner customer, the moral of the story is the same for Insight customers - they get the best price for each product when they're bundled together.

If you're interested in finding out how much you might save by bundling, I suggest you head over to this page that describes Insight's product bundles.

Insight Business unveils new high speed broadband in Columbus

Insight Business provides phone, broadband data, and video solutions to businesses throughout Insight's service area. In Columbus, Ohio, Insight Business is announcing a new tier of service for broadband customers.

We have completed our new suite of Columbus high-speed Internet services and are pleased to announce the offering of two new additional speeds of 10 Mbps and 15 Mbps in addition to our existing broadband offerings. Customers can add static IPs in groups of 1, 5, or 13 as needed by their specific application. If your Columbus-based business is still using an expensive and slow T1 or DSL for your Internet connection, give us a call. With these new speed offerings, Insight can offer competitively priced broadband at higher speeds than T1 or DSL.

An extension for analog television in the works

Bush Official Now For Analog Extension [Multichannel News]  

The head of the federal agency that is responsible for the digital converter box coupon program has endorsed the idea of keeping analog TV signals on for a month after the February 17th switch to digital TV. Rather than broadcasting regular programming, the analog TV signals would provide public safety announcements and information about the digital transition. 

The U.S. Senate passed legislation yesterday to create this 30 day analog extension, and similar legislation is pending in the House. 

Even with the millions of dollars of advertising that broadcasters and cable operators have aired to create awareness and educate Americans about the digital television transition, surveys have shown that there is a small percentage of Americans that don't know what they need to do to continue receiving their television signals after February 17th. Creating this extension should be a way to make sure everyone gets the message.

Remember, if you're an Insight customer, you will have no problem continuing to receive everything you receive today on all your televisions that are connected to cable after the digital transition.

Storm Aftermath -- The Slow Recovery

Nearly a quarter million households in the greater Louisville area are still without power in the wake of Sunday afternoon's storm. This is the result of over 5,000 broken lines and nearly 300 snapped utility poles.  American Electric Power reported that over 300,000 were still without power in central Ohio and it might be six more days until everyone has power restored.  Duke Energy reported 500,000 still out of service in the Greater Cincinnati area, including our service area in Northern Kentucky.  Needless to say, this type of damage affects all utilities are impacted by the damage of this surprise severe weather.  We are too.

Our Network Operations Center (NOC) remains without power.  Those of you outside the Louisville market and those in Louisville who have power and Internet service remain online because of the back-up generators that have now been keeping us up and running for over 30 hours.

Friday links: a great site on high definition television for Columbus

I ran into a neat site yesterday that I thought I'd pass along to those of you in the Columbus, Ohio area. It's called HDColumbus.net, and it's basically a blog and a forum for high definition television in Central Ohio.

If you're a HD technophile like I am, sometimes you just can't get enough information about HD televisions, devices, or signals. A local users group is a great way to trade information about this ever-evolving technology.

WOW! Where's our Workforce?

A while back we were given the opportunity to hire a number of experienced customer service representatives who were looking for new positions.  Why?  Because their jobs were eliminated when their employer and our competitor -- WOW -- closed one of their local call centers.