Friday, December 29, 2017
New Year Will Bring Changes to Cable and Internet for EPB Customers
11:14 AM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
With the coming of a new year, some changes are planned for
our internet and cable systems. First,
we are pleased to announce that we will be increasing our speeds for our
internet services within the coming weeks.
We will be providing this improvement at no additional cost to our
customers, and will notify our customers when this change is complete and ready
for our customers to enjoy.
The end of 2017 brings us to the implementation of our
decision to drop WSMV, WTVF, and possibly WHAS from our cable television
lineup. This is not a decision we look forward to carrying out, but it was made
necessary by the continuing cost increases demanded by the networks and the
broadcast stations that affiliate with them.
Every three years we must negotiate a new carriage agreement
with each of the broadcast television stations we carry on our system. The
broadcasters are able to charge us for carrying their programming because the
companies that own them successfully convinced our Congress to pass laws which
give them the right to do so. This was an outright gift to the broadcasters by
our elected representatives. They made it legal for this transfer of wealth
from our customers to distant broadcast television stations, and that is not
even the worst of the laws relative to your cable service.
We are also legally required to carry the network
programming (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox) from the Bowling Green broadcast stations
instead of being allowed to choose broadcast sources in Nashville or Louisville.
So, our decision is not based just on the payment demands of WSMV, WTVF, and
WHAS. It is also based on what we are required to pay WBKO and WNKY in order to
offer ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX programming. Those payments to the Bowling Green
broadcasters set up the financial situation where we felt that many of our
customers just would not want to pay the additional cost of maintaining duplicate
broadcast stations over the next three-year contract period.
This is obviously not a unanimous decision, as we have heard
from some customers that they would rather pay the extra than lose the
Nashville and Louisville stations. Rather, it seems to be another situation
wherein the community is divided between those that want rates as low as
possible, and those willing to pay the additional cost to maintain the
programming status quo. In light of this division, our Programming Committee
and Board of Directors, made the difficult decision to drop some channels to
keep rates low.
The final decision on the fate of WHAS will be made before
January 10. We are awaiting another meeting of the EPB Board and hoping for
some additional price concession by the WHAS folks. We will keep you posted on
the decision about whether WHAS will remain on our system very soon.With the coming of a new year, some changes are planned for our internet and cable systems.
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6 comments:
If GEPB cable service for Glasgow carries an "off the air" Television station, does this cause any expense to those TV stations? If not, why do they charge for this to happen? It would seem to me that it would be to their advantage to have us as viewers for their stations.
We don't get a lot of insight into how the business works for a broadcast station. Like you, we think that the distribution of their advertising ought to be enough benefit for the broadcaster, but we likely don't have all of the facts. The networks might charge the broadcasters a per cable subscriber fee, but we don't know that. I'm afraid the most obvious answer as to why they do this is, because they can.
Billy, If WHAS is retained, what will be the annual customer charge, including taxes?? The only good I get from the channel is a little extended Kentucky Derby overage..
WHAS alone would add about $3.50 per month to basic cable bills in Glasgow. This is in addition to any rate increases that might become necessary as a result of price increases from other programming providers.
Most of the blog post was about TV service, with only one small line about the internet speed increase. Any further details on that front?
We have a team working steadily to get the upgrade working, but the upgrade is taking longer than we anticipated. Full detail and implementation ought to be available in a few days.