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Gold/Mining/Energy : USA Video Interactive (US:ASE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don craig who wrote (899)	1/22/1998 9:29:00 PM
From: Jim Craig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1841

Oh, we're here alright... Watching the (in)action... Waiting for the big news release...

To: Don craig who wrote (899)	1/22/1998 11:24:00 PM
From: Clark Kent	Respond to of 1841

Did anyone read the article in the Globe today about Rogers. It looks like US-A may have hitched their wagon to the wrong pony. Here is brief recap of the article and feelings of a subscriber. Message 3229172 To: +Paul Andreola (83 ) From: +Jadrew Thursday, Jan 22 1998 10:08AM EST Reply # of 84 Customer Satisfaction and the Free Market: Running a monopoly company like Rodgers sure can cloud an CEO's view of the free market. Teddy, believed that his "influence" with the CRTC could last forever and that his cable rates could subsidize his forays into cellular, multi-media etc. Well that part has worked. However, $5.3 billion in debt later it appears the end is near. What years of consumer complaining to the Canadian government over excessive cable rates failed to do, the FREE MARKET will do. Nice stock price of $5.00 (with 180 million shares o/s, a market cap of $900 million). Lots of satisfied shareholders. Really happy customers. So what does the guy do ? Tries once again to milk his monopoly cable subscribers with a unwanted package of MeTV channels for $6/mth to improve cash flow. Opps, noboby's buying, so lets try raising the wanted channels by $2/mth so we can lower the unwanted channels to $4/mth. Guess what's going to happen next ? The cows are going to start cancelling their basic and combo package ($24/mth and $11/mth respectively). We were pretty pissed with the negative billing try a couple of years ago. I think the consumer term starts with a B and ends with a T. Say goodbye to any ability to access the capital markets. If I was a shareholder rather than just a CANCELLING cable subscriber I'd be even more pissed. The only thing that might relieve the pain was the comfort that Teddy has a lot more shares that will face dilution during the probable debt restructuring.