Insight's CEO perpetuates friend-of-consumer image while editing discussions

Scott Ritcher, June 2008, from NewsTheMagazine.com

In May 2008, in order to continue to expand the ruse that his giant, manipulative cable company is a friendly neighbor, Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner started his own blog.

He opened his blog with a post reading, "When it comes to communicating with the public, most companies take the safest path. They usually play their cards pretty close to their chest. I'm joining the blogsosphere to challenge that 'wisdom.'" Presumably, like Insight's television commercials (which star himself as some sort of Dave Thomas character) he envisioned this blog as another way to put a friendly face on the company.

My September 2006 article regarding Insight here on News N Shit, We Want the Airwaves Back, has been among this site's most popular pieces. So needless to say, as soon as I was made aware of his site, MichaelsInsight.com I became an active reader and commenter.

On the site Willner says, "Comments are posted immediately. I review the comments and will remove those that are not germane to the topics being discussed on the blog."

It may come as no surprise that Mr. Willner, or whomever is actually moderating the comments, has found none of mine to be "germane to the topics being discussed." I would be surprised if he is actually the one watching these comments come in as late on a Sunday night as my most recent one did.

One of Willner's latest entries is entitled "Shame on you AT&T" and scolds that company for an ad campaign with "tiny fine print" that he says is "misleading consumers." His description of AT&T's advertising techniques could almost be mistaken as a rewording of my previous article's criticism of Insight's advertising (shown here).

He says they have "stooped to a new low" in Louisville. What he doesn't say is that no other company is legally permitted to offer cable service in Louisville - AT&T is delivering television service via satellite - so the playing field has been stacked in Insight's favor since the '90s. Insight has what amounts to an exclusive franchise with Louisville Metro Government that keeps out any conceivable prospect of competition - and they've fought in courts and against grassroots appeals to Metro Council to keep it that way.

The user comments that follow Willner's anti-AT&T post read like a chorus of "yes" men at a board meeting. "Yes I hate those misleading ads!" ... "I agree..." ... "I wish Insight would come back with a advertisement that compares ATT (slow,slower,slowest)-vs- Insight speed, performance and cable reliability." ... Even one that says, "It's too bad that they're threatened by such a small company, but good for Insight."

Either these comments are posted by the same board of "yes" men (possibly, since there are as many spelling errors in the comments as there are in his original posts) or perhaps (gasp!) Insight's friendly approach is working.

I was so flabbergasted by his characterization of something his own company does as "misleading" and the comments that followed, that I decided to try my hand again at leaving a comment on his website. Just as before, my comments appeared for just a matter of minutes before being deleted from the site.

Luckily, I cut-and-pasted a copy of what I posted, so if Insight and Mr. Willner aren't genuinely interested in a dialogue with customers, you can at least read it here. Maybe you'd like to cut-and-paste it as well and repost it, or write your own opinions and questions, back on MichaelsInsight.com, say, I don't know, forty times a day.

Anyway, here it is:

I can't believe my eyes. Somebody at Insight actually has the nerve to call another company's ads "misleading"? Beyond that, they use the word "shame"? If there is a company in this picture that doesn't know the meaning of either of these terms, it is Insight.

My previous post on this site was deleted within minutes of it appearing, despite the fact that everything discussed was relevant to the topics. I'm not sure why such a "blog" would exist if it were not intended for discussion. Perhaps nobody has informed Mr. Willner of the definition of that term either.

I'm certain the vast majority Insight customers know nothing of the following topics, which I'm also certain will never be addressed here nor in any other Insight-sanctioned forum. However, I urge Mr. Willner to leave this post on the blog to demonstrate that this site actually is intended to be a dialogue with customers. I am not the only one with these concerns and I would love to see them addressed. If anything I have stated is inaccurate, I would like that pointed out as well. Thank you.

1. Insight has an exclusive deal with Louisville Metro Government to be the only provider of cable television service in the city. No other company is allowed to compete. Insight flagrantly broke the terms of this exclusive arrangement by transferring ownership of itself without the approval of the city. Louisville residents have no choice for cable service. It's either Insight or something that comes through the air.

2. Insight's internet service blocks the auto-complete function of their customers' web browsers in order to feed advertisements to users instead of directing them to the site they intended to view. If you've ever typed a web address and expected your browser to auto-complete the ".com" on the domain and ended up being forwarded to a site beginning with "ww33.not-found-entry.org" full of ads, this is Insight's way of making even more money from you than what you are paying them directly. The opt-in/opt-out function on the page is a joke and still holds your browser hostage, preventing it from auto-completing addresses.

3. Insight CEO Michael Willner contributed the maximum allowable amount to Republican Ernie Fletcher's campaign for Kentucky governor. Shortly after his election, Fletcher announced a restructuring of Kentucky tax laws that was to Insight's benefit so much so that Willner was quoted in the governor's press release: http://www.e-archives.ky.gov/_govfletcher/records/pressreleases(dec.03-june04)/JOBSTelecommunications.htm. Around the same time, another Insight executive Keith Hall (who also contributed the maximum legal amount to Fletcher's campaign) left the company and was appointed by Fletcher as Kentucky's chief of homeland security. Hall later left Kentucky government amid controversy and returned to work for Insight as a government lobbyist. Fletcher was denied a second term and was repeatedly investigated for questionable ethics and hiring practices.

4. Insight has refused to run advertisements which criticize Republican Senator Mitch McConnell's catering to special interest groups. The Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan group with 150,000 members, reported that Insight rejected their ad and wouldn't accept their money, even though every other media outlet the ad was submitted to aired it. No surprise, since Insight executives have contributed nearly $20,000 to McConnell's campaigns.

5. With regards to the comment another user posted above that suggests AT&T is "threatened by such a small company" as Insight; Insight is owned by a gigantic $19+ billion private equity firm called the Carlyle Group. It's so huge that if every single person on earth pitched in a dollar, we couldn't afford to buy a third of it. Carlyle also controls United Defense, one of the world's largest military machinery manufacturers. They have profited immensely from the war in Iraq which has cost the lives of thousands. Again, no surprise nor coincidence, since the players in Carlyle have included former heads of state and policy makers like the president's father former President Bush, James Baker, Frank Carlucci, and John Major, even members of the Bin Laden family. This is not conspiracy theory or Wikipedia nonsense. This is fact from public records, including Insight and Carlyle's own websites: http://www.insightcom.com/documents/Insight_07292005a.pdf and http://www.carlyle.com/Portfolio/Alphabetically/item8775.html.

Insight is by no means the friendly neighbor their own misleading ads would have you believe. Insight is part of a massive apparatus that influences laws by funding lawmakers' campaigns. They edit what you see on television and through their internet service so it serves their purposes. And in the event that they cannot work within the confines of common ethics and their previous agreements, they simply ignore the laws that are inconvenient to their objectives.

This is the official campaign website for Kentucky State Senate candidate Scott Ritcher.
Accessible from BallotRevolution.org, ScottRitcher.com, ScottRitcher.org. Paid for by Ritcher 2008.