(a) Every cable television company shall provide credit to subscribers affected by any service outage in excess of four continuous hours in accordance with subdivisions (b) and (c) of this section. The four-hour period shall commence at the time the cable television company first becomes aware of the service outage.

(b) Whenever a cable television company may reasonably determine the existence and scope of a service outage as, for example, a service outage caused by a major failure in the system's headend or distribution electronic equipment, which service outage exceeds four continuous hours and some part of which occurs during the hours 6:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m., the cable television company shall automatically credit the account of each affected subscriber.

(c) In the event a cable television company cannot determine all subscribers affected by a service outage in excess of four continuous hours or no part of such outage occurs during the hours 6:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m., credit shall be given to any eligible subscriber who makes application therefor by either written or oral notice within 90 days of such service outage.

(d) The minimum credit for a service outage shall be equal to one thirtieth times the applicable monthly charge for each 24-hour period during which a service outage continues for at least four hours.

(e) A cable television company shall be responsible for every service outage except for interruption of programming to provide emergency information to the public using the Emergency Alert System as defined in section 896.5 of this Title.