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Charter's Hidden "Broadcast TV" Fee Now Adds $197 a Year to Cable Bills

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

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

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."

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:32PM

    by anubi (2828) on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:32PM (#1022584) Journal

    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]