Wednesday, October 29, 2014
An Update on Cable Programming Changes and Negotiations
10:35 AM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
It is fall in
Glasgow. The leaves and landscape are changing, and some changes are coming to
EPB’s cable television lineup as well.
Like so many
times over the last few months, our negotiations with the programming providers
are causing us to reconsider what channels we offer. The first change is about
to result in G4 (EPB Channel 147 and HD Channel 552) being dropped from our
system on November 30.
As
in most programming changes, the reason for this change comes down to money.
NBC Universal owns G4, and has announced
they will discontinue it in the near future. They also own NBC Sports Network.
NBC has just purchased rights to some NASCAR races and has increased the cost
of NBC Sports Network to cover the cost of this programming. In order to help
us pay the increased cost, they gave us a chance to drop G4, and we are going
to take it so as to keep our programming cost increases down.
This is not
the last change you will see before the end of the year. We are in discussion
with the broadcast stations in Bowling Green, Louisville, and Nashville. The
early indications are that the broadcasters are going to ask for whopping
increases in the fees we must pay to carry many of those stations. Already one
broadcaster has asked for a nearly 400% increase! Simply put, we are not going
to pay such ridiculous fees because we would simply have to pass them along to
you. Any station that makes such a demand will very likely be dropped from our
system at the end of the year.
These
discussions will be going on throughout the month of November. We will keep you
posted, and even ask for your advice, via our social networking sites so we can
make sure to represent your feelings correctly in these discussions.
Stay tuned.
The programmers are not through socking it to us through their fee demands. In
January we will have to adjust our cable rates to reflect all of our new costs
for programming agreements signed during the last half of 2014. We will tell
you how all of this is going as soon as we have deals completed.
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