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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: 2) by srobert on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:34PM (5 children)

    by srobert (4803) on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:34PM (#1022439)

    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.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:56PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:56PM (#1022451) Journal

    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

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 16 2020, @07:31PM (#1022529)
      They can't replace them all. They have negotiated spots and the stations try to fill them with ads for their own stuff (shows, news, etc) so they don't lose much revenue from it.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:19PM

      by anubi (2828) on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:19PM (#1022603) Journal

      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

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:57PM (#1022452)

    the business model of broadcast tv channels

    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

    Instead of charging the cable and satellite companies to rebroadcast

    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

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 16 2020, @07:40PM (#1022536)
    When cable became the majority TV source for most households, the local affiliates began to switch over from the "must carry"* arrangement to a paid-but-optional arrangement with the cable networks. Today those cable carriage fees account for about 50% of the revenue for the big broadcast networks and their affiliates. They know the cable companies won't shut them out completely (sure, they get into spats over new contracts but it usually gets worked out) so they get the cable audience numbers for advertising AND the carriage fees.

    *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.