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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: 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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