The following letter was sent to Susan Booker, Charter Communications Cable.
Please consider this letter a formal complaint about an unfair political advantage Charter Communications is advocating for Malibu City Council candidate Beverly Taki by allowing programming of her show to air during the election campaign time period.
The Van de Hoek for City Council campaign has received numerous complaints from Malibu residents expressing concern that at least three separate programs Ms. Taki is hosting have been aired in the last week alone. She is shown with the mayor and mayor pro tem of Malibu, with children gathered around her and what many might consider to be other favorable settings that clearly provide Ms. Taki with an unfair advantage over the other candidates.
What allowance of this programing is equates to providing her with free advertising time, while the other candidates do not have such time available. In fact, a salesperson from your office called our office a couple of weeks ago to specifically inform us that all advertising time available between the time of the call and the election is now sold out.
My understanding, after talking with members of the community who served on the city’s Telecommunications Task Force is that Charter, and its predecessor Falcon, agreed to abide by the City Council’s resolution stating that all such programming would be halted during election campaign periods.
Because of this extremely unfair advantage that Ms Taki has received from your company, I ask for the following: Immediately cease all programming of Beverly Taki’s programs on Charter Communications until April 10, and provide each of the other four candidates running for Malibu City Council with a proper accounting of how much time Ms Taki has been on the air with her programs since the January election filing date closed, and offer equal time programming for the other candidates between now and election day.
Robert Roy van de Hoek