Thursday, December 31, 2015
It is the Witching Hour for AMC
1:30 PM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
As we
suggested in a couple of earlier blog posts, if an agreement isn’t reached by
midnight December 31, AMC may demand that we, along with hundreds of other
cable companies, pull them from the cable lineup. Our programming supplier,
NCTC, has been trying to negotiate a sensible and fair agreement with AMC for
several months, but AMC’s aggressive demands for shocking rate increases, a ten
year contract, and demands for us to add five additional channels that they own
(and pay dearly for those channels too!), simply did not seem fair to NCTC,
EPB, or our customers.
We want to
continue carrying AMC Networks and providing programming like The Walking Dead, but there has to be a
limit to what these networks can demand of you, the customers who ultimately
must pay for the programming. The terms that AMC is demanding would initially
add $2 to everyone’s cable bill (on top of the other increases coming due to
contracts already signed with other programmers) and that cost would increase
sharply every year for the next nine years. Just think about how video
programming is evolving. We surely cannot commit to paying for AMC at a
spiraling rate for the next ten years; especially when so much video programming
is going to streaming services.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Tough Cable Television Discussions Continue Through 2015
While we have
talked a lot lately about progress and issues surrounding our analog-to-digital
channel conversion project, and that conversation will continue; there is
another matter we are battling on your behalf that we have not talked about
lately. This is not a new issue. Rather it is the recurring matter of broadcast
channels, and other cable programming vendors, making outlandish demands for
program access fees, as well as demands that they be the exclusive outlet for
certain programming.
A number of
programming contracts have expired this year, or will expire at the end of the
year. Some of those vendors have settled for reasonable rate increases, but a
couple of them are still hammering away at us with demands for exclusivity and
staggering rate increases. Those vendors are AMC Networks and Max Media
Kentucky (owner of WNKY-CBS and WNKY-NBC in Bowling Green). Shortly after the first of the new year, we will also begin a painful negotiation with Turner Networks.
AMC is riding
the popularity of its Walking Dead series
as it demands huge increases in the fees for AMC channel, as well as demanding
that we add (and ask you to pay for) five more of the channels they own, even
though we do not want them. We, along with over 700 other
small cable operators across the nation, purchase the majority of the
programming you see on TV from National Cable Television Co-op (NCTC), which
gives us better pricing and bargaining leverage. NCTC is in charge of the
negotiations and while we certainly believe an agreement will be reached, there
is also a remote possibility that AMC will walk away from the negotiations and
require all of the cable operators to take AMC off until an agreement is
reached. If you would like to read more about these negotiations, with
continually updated information, you may do so by clicking this link. We
will make every effort to get the best deal possible for our subscribers
working through this co-op.
The situation
with Max Media/WNKY is even worse. They sought, and received, FCC permission to
virtually force WTVF and WSMV off of any cable system serving Barren County. We are in discussions with them and we hope to get them to honor the wishes of the people of Glasgow by allowing us to continue carrying some of the programming on these stations, but the outcome of those talks is still up in the air. They are also demanding very large fee increases for their programming.
Both of these
battles are ongoing, and likely will continue throughout the remainder of 2015.
We will keep you posted on how all of this develops, but a satisfactory outcome
seems unlikely for the people of Glasgow. We are again caught between the dueling issues of dropping programming, or paying a lot more for it.
Friday, December 11, 2015
Can We Talk?
Even though
we use our website, Facebook, Twitter, the RBG blog, Cable 6 and the Weather
Channel scroll, we know that there are still people not getting the important
information about our services that we distribute often. So, we are providing another service that helps fill that gap.
Everbridge is
a service that adds text messages, emails, or voice phone calls to our methods for
giving our customers essential information about their electric power, cable
television programming, and internet service issues. To use this service, customers
must either sign up themselves or give us their information over the phone, or
through a face-to-face visit to our lobby. Participants can receive a text
message, an email or an automated phone call when our Dispatch team has
important information for customers. Messaging can go to more than one person,
more than one way, and customers can receive messages about more than one
address if they choose (on behalf of an elderly parent, for example).
To sign up we
will need a name, street address and the preferred method for the customer to be
contacted (an email address and/or a phone number selecting whether it should
be phone call or text). If customers choose more than one way to be contacted,
they need to be clear on the preferred order. Customers can sign up right now
by clicking this link https://member.everbridge.net/index/892807736723615#/login or by using the links on the main
front page of www.glasgow-ky.com or www.infotricity.org . There is no charge for this service, and customers may update their
information at any time after signing up.
We are trying
very hard to make sure that essential information finds a way to be heard and
understood by all of our customers, and we hope our customers will find this
new free service useful.
Monday, December 7, 2015
EPB Internet Upgrade Time is Now
Glasgow EPB
has traditionally given its internet customers a Christmas gift in the form of
increased download speeds for the coming year. This year, the tradition
continues as we will increase our standard internet download speeds as well as
our upload speeds. All of our cable modem products will receive upgrades at no
additional cost. Merry Christmas!
It certainly
is not as easy to do this as it might sound. In order for us to make this improvement
for 2016, we are replacing the very heart of our cable modem system with a much
more powerful piece of hardware and software. And, like all big construction
projects, there will be some inconvenience before everyone gets to enjoy the
upgrades. On Wednesday December 9, at midnight, we will take down our internet service so we can install the new hardware. The work should be completed by 6:00 am on Thursday.
Some of this
work is already ongoing. A lot of the space we freed up by converting the
analog cable channels to digital will be used to allow many years of upgrades
to the internet system. Now that most of the digital conversion project is
done, we are now about to begin an operation similar to a heart and lung
transplant, but in our case we must do that operation while the patient is
still walking down the street! It is going to be difficult and complicated, but
that is what we do.
Please stay
tuned to our blog, our Facebook page, and Cable6 for updates on this project.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Informational Bills Continue
As November
comes to a close it is a good time to again discuss the matter of the coming
change in the way our electric rates work.
During the
last couple of weeks all EPB electric customers should have gotten an
informational paper bill which was sent out separately from the regular
billing. This paper bill represented a comparison to the actual billing each
customer got for their October usage. The bill used actual October usage for
each customer and provided information about how their October bill would have
looked under the new 2106 rates.
Nothing about
this informational bill should be seen as a fixed result. The information was
for October consumption, and most folks who saw an increase in the bill
compared to the actual bill can change that by simply trying to reduce their
usage during the monthly peak hour (coincident peak demand). Everyone will not
be able to save money using this tactic, but many can.
Over the next
few weeks everyone will get another informational bill which uses the new rates
applied to November electric power usage. We plan to do this again for December
consumption as well. In this fashion, everyone will get three informational
bills which will provide comparison bills for October, November, and December.
It is our hope that these examples will help all EPB electric customers become
familiar with this new way of purchasing energy.
If the
informational bills do not answer all questions, then there are other ways to
do so. We created www.infotricity.net just for the purpose of answering
questions on the new rate. We also created the Infotricity Energy Portal https://portal.glasgow-ky.com/ so that every single electric meter
in Glasgow can be monitored by the account holder in real time so long as they
have internet access. In fact, the portal has a bill comparison feature that
will allow customers to compare their bills under the new rate to their bills
under the old rate for a full year. The very best customized information for
all of our electric customers can be obtained by signing up for the Infotricity
Energy Portal site and visiting it often.
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