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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Tuesday, September 4, 2001

Oceanic channel shuffle increases standard service

By Adrienne Ancheta
Advertiser Staff Writer

It's time for another new television remote-control cheat sheet.

Oceanic Cable announced Friday that it will adopt a new channel lineup affecting 22 channels on analog and digital cable services.

The change, effective Sept. 24, is the result of adding to the standard cable offering two new channels and seven channels previously designated "premium."

The new channels, Oxygen and We: Women's Entertainment — both aimed at women — will now be available to standard analog and digital subscribers. The Golf Channel, CNN Sports Illustrated, The History Channel, Fox Sports Net West 2, Bravo and Turner Classic Movies will become part of the standard service. ESPN2 was added to standard service earlier this summer.

"We understand it is a hassle for people," Kit Beuret, director of public affairs at Oceanic, said of the change. "But for the inconvenience, they are getting extra channels." Oceanic tries to keep major reshufflings of channels down to about once every other year, he said.

The former premium channels are being moved to the standard service now that contract negotiations have made them more cost-effective for the Time Warner subsidiary.

Meanwhile, digital cable subscribers have two more new channels: a shopping channel called America's Store, and the Independent Film Channel. In addition, the movie channel Flix was added to digital's "encore" service but will no longer be available to analog subscribers.

Though only nine new channels were added to the standard analog service, the limitations of analog required shuffling many other channels. Oceanic groups channels according to type of programming, such as keeping sports channels and family channels together on the dial, Beuret said.

The company also groups channels according to availability. It blocks channels depending on the service subscribed to and the type of subscriber (for example, a public establishment cannot show HBO).

The technology for blocking limits the number of channels that can be blocked and requires blocked channels to be grouped near each other.

"We try not to (change channel lineups) too much, and a lot of thought goes into it," Beuret said.

The company mailed notice cards to its more than 250,000 customers Sunday.