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Charter’s hidden “Broadcast TV” fee now adds $197 a year to cable bills:
Charter Communications is raising the "Broadcast TV" fee it imposes on cable plans from $13.50 to $16.45 a month starting in August, Stop the Cap reported.
Charter says the Broadcast TV fee covers the amount it pays broadcast television stations (e.g. affiliates of CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox) for the right to carry their channels. But for consumers, it is essentially a hidden fee because Charter's advertised TV prices don't include it.
Charter has raised the fee repeatedly—it stood at $9.95 in early 2019 before a series of price increases. At $16.45 a month, the fee will cost customers an additional $197.40 per year. Charter sells TV, broadband, and phone service under its Spectrum brand name and is the second largest cable company in the US after Comcast.
Charter imposes a smaller Broadcast TV fee on its streaming TV plans, but is raising that charge from $6 to $8.95 a month, Stop the Cap wrote. Charter is also raising the base price of its TV service. "Spectrum's most popular TV Select package is expected to increase $1.50/month to $73.99/month," Stop the Cap wrote. "Customers on a promotional pricing plan will not see this rate increase until their promotional pricing expires."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:31AM (4 children)
Does the US not have terrestrial broadcast TV? ATSC digital TV is hardly niche.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:49AM
Keep in mind that this fee isn't optional. I can't tell Charter that I don't want to receive those channels via cable and then just use an antenna. It's a mandatory hidden surcharge. Just to be clear, when Charter bought up Time Warner Cable, they promised not to engage in antics like this.
Also, I live in Lincoln, NE. That's 50 miles from Omaha, NE, which is a separate market with its own TV stations. But we're close enough to receive some Omaha stations. Reception could be tricky, though, particularly on the western side of the city, or for people who aren't able to set up a good outdoor antenna. The Omaha stations used to be available on cable in Lincoln. One by one, they've been removed, starting with KMTV (CBS), then WOWT (NBC), and most recently KETV (ABC). We get KPTM (Fox) but that is only available on cable in SD, not HD. Yes, the actual station does broadcast in HD.
Cable actually was useful in the past to get Omaha stations that would be difficult to receive over the air. Those stations have been removed, reducing the quality of the service provided, while this surcharge has significantly increased. Part of Charter's decision to purchase Time Warner Cable was so they could negotiate cheaper subscriber fees with channels and keep their costs down. At the same time, they took on a tremendous amount of debt, which customers are now paying for.
So, yes, we do get ATSC. But there are still advantages to cable when it's difficult to receive those stations. And Charter is screwing its customers over by degrading the quality of its service while raising fees that are supposed to pay for that specific part of the service.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:00AM
Where I live an antenna will only get me 4 stations (CBS and ABC are behind a mountain), and those only at night. I can be watching the morning news and tell you when the sun comes up without looking outside. During the day the signal drops so often it's too annoying to watch.
To be honest, I don't really miss network TV. For the shows I really care about I torrent them.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Booga1 on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:11AM
TLDR Yes, but... it's all messed up and it's all about the money. Customers get the shaft by either missing out on stations or paying to watch stuff that's available for free over the air.
Many places still have over-the-air channels available if you have the right antenna. However, the situation is a little complex due to the way cable companies handled providing those "local broadcast stations" through their subscription service.
The regulations involved are summarized here: https://www.fcc.gov/media/cable-carriage-broadcast-stations [fcc.gov]
Basically, the cable companies were retransmitting the local stations so their customers would be able to watch them without switching over to the antenna. This was rather convenient for the people watching TV. However, the local stations were upset because the cable company was basically re transmitting their channels without consent. I understand that in some cases the cable companies were even replacing the local ads with their own. So, the local stations demanded to be paid by the cable companies if they wanted to keep re-transmitting the channel. Of course the cable companies said, "We're not paying you anything. You're lucky we're letting our customers see your channel at all!"
There were some lawsuits and new regulations put in so that the cable companies had to pay the local stations to rebroadcast the content. Part of that was that legislation allowed cable companies to charge a "nominal" fee to customers in order to recoup some of that cost. Every few years contracts between cable companies and local stations expire and the local stations demand more money from the cable companies. Cable companies balk at paying more, stations get pulled off cable and both companies run ads blaming the other companies for why your favorite local station "isn't available."
All that said, part of the legislation also allows a station to force a cable provider to carry their station if they chose to designate it as "must-carry." However, if they do that the cable company doesn't have to pay anything at all for re-transmission rights.
Simple, right?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday July 16 2020, @11:42AM
Italy, by being relatively small and populated by mountains, is an easy candidate for TV broadcasts, and it has been so for decades with barely a problem.
Then the internet comes, internet video comes, and the push against broadcasting begins.
DTV instead of adding to, replaces analog channels. Result, increased cost for a less solid signal, more channels mostly replete with crap. But this could still be called normal substitution of older tech with newer tech.
But then, WHY do TVs constantly switch transmission channels? Why the DTV boxes have those awful interfaces compared to which any 1980 16 channel color tv is a masterpiece of user experience?
My answer, internet TV provides way more feedback and control of the viewing experience, in both directions. Therefore broadcasts must die. Banning them altogether would show the cards, so they are progressively made more inconvenient.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gtomorrow on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:14AM (14 children)
I'm not defending Charter in any way but all service providers charge this wobbly, "beyond-our-control" Broadcast fee? Comcast/Xfinity, Wow, AT&T, etc, etc. No one is innocent!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Booga1 on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:21AM (8 children)
Yes, but I suspect it's being singled out because they've raised the price 70% in about a year.
I stopped subscribing to cable years ago, but perhaps it would be interesting to see how much the other cable providers are charging.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:50PM (7 children)
Cable TV is very much a "whatever the market will bear" pricing model, tiered plans etc. are all designed to extract as much recurring revenue as possible out of each and every customer, while spending as little as possible on content, but I suspect the ratio of content cost to subscription fees is in the high double digits - like 1:70+
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday July 16 2020, @02:30PM (5 children)
Are you figuring in the infrastructure costs to deliver the content in that? I agree that it is still exorbitant and a demonstration of what happens when you allow unrestricted capitalism with artificially restricted supply.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:50PM (3 children)
What infrastructure costs? Do we all realize that the populated portions of the US were blanketed with cable before 1970? Since then, cable has only been upgraded incrementally. Unlike cellular service, or fiber, there are basically no installation or build out expenses for cable.
I think we also understand, that cable will never, ever extend out into the boonies. It's simply not coming to Outback, Nowhere. Cable never intended to serve rural people, and will refuse point blank if asked. All of the competition beats cable, IMHO. Cable is just plain crooked, dishonest, and wrong.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:55PM (2 children)
Large parts of NYC didn't even have cable in the 80's going into the 90's.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:17PM (1 child)
I wonder about that. Were those "large parts" the less affluent parts of NYC? I can see that the cable companies might have avoided portions of the city which they thought would be less profitable.
Or, maybe someone was holding them up over right of way?
From my high school days, until I moved to Arkansas in 1986, I never lived anywhere that didn't have cable. Here, in Outback Nowhere, there is no cable. If I chose to move into almost any of the nearby towns, I could have cable.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday July 26 2020, @02:13PM
It was even the case in Manhattan. I think the cable companies thought they would fare poorly competing against the free TV stations available. You did have 7 VHF channels and many UHF channels that could be picked up with an antenna, plus most major sports were still broadcast on VHF stations.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:54PM
That number came from as reliable a place as any regarding cable fees - thin air.
Much as we are traditionally shown a breakdown of every fee and tax on a bill, I think we should also be shown a breakdown of what is actually paid for content, infrastructure, customer service, and corporate profits on every bill - including offsetting income to the corporation from investments, tax breaks, etc. Not likely to happen, but when we're stuck with virtual monopolies we should at least be given accurate information about what we've agreed (via government) to subject ourselves to.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @02:33PM
Sounds very much like Australian NBN broadband ISP plans...
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:28PM
When Time Warner morphed into Spectrum or as I call them Speculum* (they are in fact trying to find and extract your last ¢) I cut the cable TV cord. The dishonest and deceptive mailers they constantly send go straight into the round file and their phone calls end quickly when I ask "Dose your mother know you lie to people for a living? They are scumbags.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_(medical)
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday July 16 2020, @01:01PM (1 child)
Yep, that's why I ditched my basic tier TV long a few years ago. Discovered that the $17 a month basic channels (local stations +) was actually costing me $37 due to a $20 broadcast fee.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:32PM
There exists one pissed off lawyer who's started locast.com to "test the waters" regarding the legality of the rights of nonprofits to rebroadcast Ota TV requiring no permissions, copyright or other permissions to retransmit Ota TV into areas that have "bad reception"..
This has been already been done for decades by people who have had terrain blocking their signal, and they erected "mirrors" so they could see Ota.
People who live in valleys, or a housing complex where individual antennas are forbidden.
Today, many people rent or are bound by Hoa not to erect antennas. This guy is testing if non-profit groups can retransmit raw Ota to people who don't live in a pristine reception area.
Raw Ota. They do not alter the original Ota in any way. Including the original ads the original sponsors paid for.
Everyone knows this cable company scam... Strip the ad, replace it with their ad, make money, then charge for content, make money again.
Http://www.locast.com
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @01:25PM
Cox charges $10/month for broadcast fees. Even more bullshit is $2/month for each cablecard to use in my own cablebox tuners.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Friday July 17 2020, @11:31PM
I'm lucky enough to live in an area where we have a smaller cable provider along with a larger one (that everyone stopped using). The small provider kept having to raise rates and would occasionally drop channels to avoid more rate hikes. Every time it happened they'd send out notifications of the rate and channel changes explaining they are being required by the networks who were (in their opinion (and mine)) being very unreasonable about constant price hikes and bundling rules. The cable company included web links to web sites documenting this and to petition websites that subscribers could learn from and voice opinions. There's a group of smaller cable companies trying to fight this because they can't keep up with the dominate players.
Back before I dropped cable I made a comment in an email to one of cable company techs about replacing cable with a roku and a few streaming services. They offered to help. We went from 10Mb to 100Mb, picked up 3 streaming services and cut our total cost (landline, -cable +bandwidth & +streaming services) went from $150~ to $70~. Years later, even after picking up one more service and few price bumps in a couple others, we are still no where near our prior costs.
I do wish the cable company would stream their public access channels, but they are still holding on to that to try to keep cable customers.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Thursday July 16 2020, @11:59AM (3 children)
Its a fee that is forced on them by the local TV stations who charge more than most premium channels. Its no more hidden than the fee that other content providers charge. They way its said it could be a 'hidden' fee for discovery channel. Its the result of poor planning in 1996 when the regulatory laws were reworked.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:32PM
Yeah, bad idea to rework regulatory laws. They should've worked on non-regulatory ones instead.
(Score: 2) by everdred on Thursday July 16 2020, @02:39PM (1 child)
From the summary:
What you pay for Discovery Channel, on the other hand, is included in the advertised price.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Friday July 17 2020, @03:17AM
They add the fee on top of their advertised price? More than likely they sell everyone who calls in a promo then later it drops back to their standard price. I have no experience with charter but I have experience with retrans agreements with local TV stations.
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:07PM
No more advertising one price, but actually charging a different much higher price with added fees.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:34PM (5 children)
Maybe I don't understand the business model of broadcast tv channels. I thought they sold advertising and the more viewers they had the better. Instead of charging the cable and satellite companies to rebroadcast, I'd think they'd want as many viewers as possible. I remember when one of the local stations was trying to charge my satellite company more than they wanted and negotiations broke down so the station went off for a few months. I could have disconnected the cable and hooked up an antenna and watched it. But why bother? I would have only done so to see local news and weather, which were just as easily available on other local channels, or over the internet.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:56PM (2 children)
One post or another touched on the real problem. The cable company strips advertising from the broadcast, substituting their own advertising. The advertisers who paid the broadcast station realize that few if any people are seeing their commercials, so they cut their advertising on broadcast. Soon, that broadcast station is filing for bankruptcy, because there is no revenue.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday July 16 2020, @07:31PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:19PM
You nailed it.
You see exactly what's going on.
No wonder the Ota transmitter guys are pissed. I would be too, as would be my sponsors.
And I don't blame the Ota guys for fighting it. I would too. If the cable is going to echo my content, they should echo it as I transmitted it.
You guys on here know how much I detest copyright crap. This kind of crap is wrong. Just plain wrong. Even I can see it. If you retransmit someone else's work, do not change it. It is up to the end user what he does with it. Not an intermediary.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:57PM
I believe they are about 10 years more modernized than the newspapers' business models - so they didn't really do anything to account for the popular shift to internet content delivery. /s
Like PBS, they'll take money from anywhere they can get it. When times got tough because of the shift to cable, they sought (and obtained) legislative relief.
It's too bad that the Cheeto in Chief is so inept - one of the things he promised/tried to do while draining the swamp was to unwind and eliminate regulation like this.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EvilSS on Thursday July 16 2020, @07:40PM
*BTW, this "must carry" carriage rule is why you see home shopping channels with broadcast licenses in a lot of major cities. Home shopping networks normally have to pay the cable company to pay the cable company to carry them. However where they can, they buy low power stations in bigger markets and use the carriage rules to force the cable companies to carry their channels, for free. Ditto for those religious channels you see if you flip through the local broadcasts. Drives the cable companies nuts but so far the FCC hasn't be willing to get rid of the rule.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 16 2020, @08:21PM
Its interesting to follow the money.
The stories always end at the cable company. However, those fees simply pass along to the local broadcast station as per the retrans agreement.
As for what the stations are doing with the money, generally they're not keeping it either. The cost of syndicated programs only goes up and networks used to toss some money to affiliates or at least be neutral but its not unusual to get actual revenue from affiliates now.
The syndication and networks are middlemen obviously.
The money seems to get lost at numerous middlemen steps in the usual corruption.
Aside from middlemen losses, generally speaking the syndicators are small timers and are incompetent at ad sales so syndicated programming is purchased to do local station ad sales.
Its sorta like the money used to come from large efficient small number of networks, but cable created hundreds of small channels to compete so audience numbers have collapsed so ad revenue gets weird and has transitioned from network level to crappy local commercials. And the money simply isn't there and to paper over it this retrans charge concept has developed.
So essentially you're paying more in 2020 because local ad sales can't generate as much ad revenue off syndicated content as network level ad sales generated in 1980. I mean, duh, yeah due to inflation the numbers aren't actually lower, the point is you could run a network and affiliates mostly off network ad sales in 1980 but in 2020 there's not enough money without fees.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jasassin on Thursday July 16 2020, @08:39PM (3 children)
After building an outdoor antenna (about $30) I saved over $25 a month, and get more channels with better quality for free.
Like another poster said, torrents usually work great for popular shows.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Friday July 17 2020, @02:24PM (2 children)
I've been using nothing but OTA TV (recorded in MythTV) since 2007. Some in my family pay over $200 a month for pay TV...insane.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday July 18 2020, @05:45AM (1 child)
What hardware (tv card) are you using with MythTV?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:27PM
I have three HDHR4-2US HDHomeRun units for a total of 6 physical tuners. Can't say enough about them. One great thing is that there are no drivers or kernel support needed...just network access.