When Cable Attacks!

Once upon a time, having cable meant gaining access to a whole new world of information and entertainment: music videos, 24-hour news, and

movies you could actually stand to watch, before there was a Blockbuster on every corner, before most people even had VCRs.

Today, cable is more likely to conjure the same kind of complaints that neo-Luddites hurl at the ever-expanding Internet: too much information, too few filters, and way, way too much garbage to sift through. Couple that with the American public's ever-increasing capacity for violence, sex, and "reality" television, plus cable networks' desperate scramble to capture any small crumb of audience share they can, and you have a recipe for infinitely regenerating mediocrity.

Mad TV, indeed.

New ideas are born and die on cable. Since the launch of CNN in 1980, we've grown accustomed to 24-hour news on demand. But as fundamendalist Christian dealmaker-cum-media-mogul James Leininger found out, people (Texans, anyway) aren't in the market for regional and statewide news; in "Leininger Unplugged," Robert Bryce examines how Leininger's San Antonio-based TXN news network went up in smoke despite a $45 million cash infusion from the multimillionaire. And News 8 Austin, a 24-hour local news channel launched last year by Time Warner, appears to be struggling as well. "Broken News" describes a network so intent on hanging on to its employees that it's willing to sue defectors to keep them locked into lengthy contracts.

But amid all the rubbish, there are a few gems. The Austin Community Access Center (formerly ACTV) features several impressive offerings, including film review program The Reel Deal, a show that combines bottom-line movie wrap-ups with off-color comedy sketches, as profiled by Sarah Hepola in "The Real Deal." Another program aimed at cinephiles, The Show With No Name, built an audience by offering an eclectic mix of film clips, old commercials, and other arcana, but was taken off the air because of supposed violations of ACAC's noncommercialism policy. In "Media Clips," Lee Nichols and Marc Savlov take a look at the show, and the man who's allegedly behind its suspension.