HEALDTON, OK -- Over a decade ago, the city of Healdton, Oklahoma wanted to provide a good service for residents and make a profit at the same time.
"What we try to do is look at our system and where we're losing money, and where we're losing money, can we turn it around so we can make money, and that's the goal- to turn it around," said City Manager, Louis Smitherman.
So the city started offering municipal cable. The system took years to turn a profit. Just as things were looking up, vandals struck.
"The moved our dish. They tore up a lot of our lines coming off the main feeds. Actually, there were seven that were pulled off the main tower," Cable contractor Ken Adkins said.
The damage was so specific, Adkins things it was most likely done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. Now subscribers know exactly what they're missing.
"When you have 11 channels that go off the air and six or seven that come in real fuzzy, it was due to the bad connectors and the pulled connectors," said Adkins.
It's disappointing for City Manager Louis Smitherman. He has high hopes for the city provider.
"The services we're providing, the channels and those kinds of things, and the channels that people want to watch, we want to provide quality services," Smitherman said.
He also has a warning for the vandals.
"I just hope that those people who feel like they can go and do it, that they will get caught. The penalties are really, really high," he cautions.
Hundreds of cables, hundreds of customers, thousands of dollars to fix the problem. But the city will get one break.
"We're donating the labor to actually put this back in. We're just hoping the city and the people in the city that have our cable will give us a little bit of patience, a little more patience, so we can get it back on," Adkins said.
But it's still difficult to say how long that patience will need to last.
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