The president and general manager of KHNL/KFVE-TV, whose television rights for UH sports ends in 13 months, said it's premature to even respond to the reported $6 million proposal.
"The thing I find silly about all this is the university hasn't solicited any bids," Armstrong said yesterday. "It's nothing more than a bunch of hoopla for newspaper reporters to write about.
"We've had discussions, but the university hasn't opened formal proposals from any interested parties. We will all be asked to paint a picture that will include much more than money.
"Until we see that document, it's really premature to even discuss it. But let me say this, we believe the University of Hawaii is a public trust that should be available to all people, regardless what cable company they subscribe to."
According to the Nielsen numbers, 86 percent of the people of Hawaii subscribe to a cable affiliate. There are currently 381,010 television households in this state.
That means 53,341 households would no longer be able to watch Hawaii athletics if the university awarded the television contract to a cable affiliate.
Oceanic Cable president Don Carroll said yesterday that his company has a penetration rate of 91 percent of the 335,000 television households on Oahu.
He added that Oceanic would try to work out a deal with the other cable companies in the island chain to broadcast UH sports.
"We want to keep our market share in place against competing systems that will enter the market over the next few years," Carroll said. "On the mainland, companies such as Direct TV and Alfa Star are offering movie and sports packages similar to what we do now.
"We want to be able to offer something that nobody else can give, and UH sports is it. It's a very competitive market out there, and what we're proposing is unique.
"We're not worried about GTE making a bid on this contract because they won't have everything in place in time, but they will in five years, so it's important for us to make a bid now."
University of Hawaii athletic director Hugh Yoshida wants to have the new television contract in place sometime this summer, but that may prove difficult.
The university is four to six weeks away from asking for official proposals. Even when that process is completed, it still could take time before a final decision is announced.
"We're taking a wait-and-see attitude," Armstrong said. "We've done this for 12 years, and after you do something over and over, you get pretty good at it.
"We have built this from only 15 broadcasts in 1984 to more than 120 this year. We feel it would be a disservice to the people of Hawaii if this contract went to cable."
Unlike KFVE-TV, Oceanic Cable doesn't have the production capabilities in place, but Carroll said there were companies on the mainland that would be more than willing to handle the production end of it.
"As far as who would be the broadcasters of the events, I think we'd leave that up to UH," Carroll said. "That's something they would be better suited to handle.
"We're excited about our proposal. If we didn't do this now, we feel we would be crippling ourselves in the future."
The five-year proposal would pay the university $1.2 million a year. The current KFVE-TV package is about $425,000 a year.
Oceanic Cable also would give promotional considerations worth nearly $2 million a year. Given the current financial problems facing the Hawaii athletic department, it might be an offer Yoshida can't refuse.