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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 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.