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posted by martyb on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the double-dip dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday July 16 2020, @11:42AM

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday July 16 2020, @11:42AM (#1022359) Journal

    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.

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