Grass-Roots Protest Pays Off : Cable Co. Restores Spanish-Language Air Time

A three-month campaign against Dimension Cable by a group of San Juan Capistrano residents has resulted in restoring broadcast time to a Spanish-language channel whose hours were cut by the cable company in June.

The campaign started when Leticia Vargas, 40, a high school counselor, discovered that static had replaced her favorite shows: the novelas, a series of Spanish-language soap operas on KMEX.

Dimension Cable, a Times-Mirror company which serves 70,000 subscribers in south Orange County, had split the channel in a time-sharing agreement, said Lora Ward, consumer affairs supervisor with the company. English-language broadcasts on KTBN were shown on the cable channel during the day, and KMEX’s Spanish-language broadcasts were limited to the 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. time slot, Ward said. In June, even KMEX evening broadcasts became sporadic because the station was carrying World Cup soccer games, Ward said.

The channel’s hours were cut when a survey showed that there were not enough viewers to support a Spanish-language channel, Ward said.

Vargas and three other citizens then began to organize the community. They collected money to mail postcards, arranged for the group to speak at a City Council meeting and marched to the company’s headquarters in two demonstrations in July, Vargas said.

“We got together and tried to deal with the issue as a community,” she said.

On Oct. 1, the company gave KMEX and KTBN their own separate channels, restoring the morning hours to the Spanish-language channel, which now is seen from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m., Ward said.

“We were technically able on the first of October to bring in an additional channel,” Ward said.

Vargas said the grass-roots effort paid off in the restoration of a valuable asset to the community.

“We do have a lot of Spanish-speaking people who are home during the day. They feel comfortable hearing the news and viewing entertainment programming in their language,” she said. “It helps to enrich our lives.”