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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: 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+
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(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.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @02:33PM
Sounds very much like Australian NBN broadband ISP plans...