YouTube TV is adding seven new basic cable networks owned by Time Warner/Turner Broadcasting to its lineup along with NBA TV and the MLB Network.

The new TW/Turner Network channels — TNT, TBS, CNN, truTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Turner Classic Movies, along with more sports programming, will also mean a $5 a month rate hike for the streaming service, effective March 13.

Existing YouTube TV customers and those signing up before the rate increase takes effect will be spared the price increase, paying $35 a month for the service instead of the $40 rate charged new customers next month.

YouTube TV has focused much of its attention in the last year on getting local broadcast stations on its lineup, and now has a complete assortment of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX affiliates in dozens of TV markets. One of the reasons cord-cutters are reluctant to cancel their cable subscription is the loss of local stations, but YouTube TV has managed to overcome that roadblock for many subscribers.

The service has spent much of its annual budget on sports channels, which are usually the most costly basic cable networks. The addition of Time Warner, Inc./Turner Broadcasting cable networks came as a result of subscriber demand. Time Warner, fighting the Department of Justice over its proposed acquisition by AT&T, will likely use the new agreement as additional evidence the company is not withholding popular cable programming from AT&T’s competitors.

YouTube TV offers a 7-day free trial, after which subscribers are charged $35 a month. If interested in the service, now is the time to subscribe before it costs $60 more a year.

Altice customers woke up on New Year’s Day to discover as many as 17 Starz and Encore premium movie channels missing from their lineup, replaced with little-watched alternative networks like The Cowboy Channel and Hallmark Drama.

It is the first retransmission consent dispute of 2018, and it began as 2017 ended. Altice issued a terse statement:

As of midnight December 31, 2017, Altice USA will no longer carry Starz or StarzEncore programming directly. Despite numerous attempts by Altice USA to reach a deal with Starz for continued carriage in video packages and a la carte carriage, Starz refused all offers, including an offer to extend our current arrangement.

Customers will not get a discount on their cable bill because of the loss of the premium movie networks. Instead, Altice quickly signed carriage agreements with several replacement basic cable networks including Hallmark Drama, Sony Movies, MGM HD, HD Net Movies, Flix, and Cowboy Channel. The last network on the list seemed an odd choice for the New York City market, featuring rodeos and rural living-oriented programming. Some customers were also placated with a replacement subscription to The Movie Channel.

Customers don’t consider the six replacements adequate for the loss of more than a dozen premium-priced movie channels, including STARZ, STARZ Edge, STARZ In Black, STARZ Comedy, STARZ Cinema, STARZ Kids & Family, STARZENCORE, STARZENCORE Action, STARZENCORE Classic, STARZENCORE Black, STARZENCORE Family, STARZENCORE Suspense, STARZENCORE Westerns, STARZENCORE Español and Movie Plex channels, and some plan to downgrade or cancel service.

Removing 17 channels and replacing them with 4, one of which is the cowboy channel is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. My bill is more than 200.00 per month, and the value for the money is definitely not worth it. Optimum is just plain greedy.

— Mary Anne Suttles (@Stormcloud2000) January 2, 2018

Altice has played hardball with programmers in the past, especially those that direct-sell their programming to consumers through online streaming. In follow-up remarks, Altice essentially told customers to go and buy Starz directly from Starz itself, and took a shot at the network claiming most of their customers don’t watch their movie channels anyway.

“We are focused on providing the best content experience for our customers and continually evaluate which channels meet their needs and preferences relative to the cost of the programming imposed by content owners,” Altice officials said in a statement. “Given that Starz is available to all consumers directly through Starz’ own over-the-top streaming service, we don’t believe it makes sense to charge all of our customers for Starz programming, particularly when their viewership is declining and the majority of our customers don’t watch Starz. We believe it is in the best interest of all our customers to replace Starz and StarzEncore programming with alternative entertainment channels that will provide a robust content experience at a great value.”

Altice did expand on what it felt were unfair terms being offered to it while consumers could get the same movies and original series for less money elsewhere:

“Since our last contract renewal, Starz began offering a direct to consumer streaming service for $8.99 per month. Given that Starz is available direct to consumer through their subscription service, we have been actively negotiating to reach a deal that makes sense for all our customers, and made numerous offers of increasing value and partnership structures.

Starz wanted an all or nothing-type deal and their insistence on terms would force us to charge customers more than what the Starz OTT product costs — that would not make sense for our customers. Given the limited viewership of Starz amongst our customer base and that consumers can get Starz directly, we believe this approach is in the best interest of all of our customers who otherwise would have seen an impact on prices due to Starz’ demands.

We have simply been seeking to do what Starz itself is doing: support a Starz a la carte product, whether through our sales channels or through their OTT service.

We have reached more than two dozen agreements over the last few months that reflect the company’s commitment to both negotiate fairly and keep costs down for customers. In addition to offers to maintain packaged distribution, we proposed extending our a la carte deal in Suddenlink to include Optimum and Starz refused – this despite the fact that Starz has a la carte only deals with other distributors. We also offered to help sell the Starz OTT service to our broadband customers and they refused. We also offered to extend our current agreements.”

Analysts say it is very uncommon for a cable company to encourage its customers to directly subscribe to a service traditionally sold by the cable operator itself. Altice sought to drive home their view that selling cable programming direct-to-consumers devalues the product for cable operators, especially if the programmer sells it directly to consumers at a lower retail price than a cable operator can can buy at the wholesale rate.

“Despite all of Altice’s assertions to the contrary, the facts in this dispute are simple. Altice wanted a drastic reduction in price that was totally inconsistent with the market and flew in the face of the record popularity of our programming,” Starz said in a statement that did not refute Altice’s cost claims.

Starz offers a 7-day free trial of its streaming app, which offers on-demand access to most titles found on Starz or Encore networks. After the free trial, the service is available for $8.99 a month or $89.99 a year, which offers a 17% discount off the monthly price. The website offers more information about supported devices and streaming policies.

Viacom and Charter Communications today announced a multi-year renewal of a carriage agreement that will bring back Viacom’s cable networks to almost all Spectrum cable television customers.

As part of the agreement, Charter has agreed to return Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central, Spike (Paramount Network), VH1, TV Land and CMT to Spectrum Select, Charter’s entry-level cable television tier. In 2016, Charter began moving Viacom’s cable networks to its most expensive tiers, Spectrum Silver or Gold, to protest Viacom’s high carriage prices. Most existing customers never realized the networks were moved because the company grandfathered current customers to keep the channels from disappearing. But as Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable customers migrated to Spectrum packages, many were annoyed to learn Viacom’s networks were missing from the lineup of Spectrum’s most popular cable television tier. Customers had to pay at least $11 a month extra to get many of those networks back.

Charter indicated its agreement allows Spectrum to keep other Viacom-owned networks not mentioned above on its Silver or Gold tiers. The agreement also grants Charter customers access to Viacom networks’ on-demand programming through set-top boxes or mobile apps.

Viacom and Charter have also entered into a partnership for co-production of new original content that will exclusively premiere for subscribers on Charter’s platform in the U.S. Under the agreement, Viacom’s Paramount Television and Charter will jointly produce programming. Viacom will distribute the co-produced programming internationally, as well as in additional domestic markets, including potentially on Viacom Networks, after Charter’s premiere period.

Viacom has also agreed to collaborate on Charter’s forthcoming effort to crackdown on unauthorized password sharing, allowing non-cable subscribers access to programming using a friend or family member’s Spectrum account details.

Pai

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s chairman said Tuesday the agency does not have authority to revoke broadcast licenses, despite suggestions from President Donald Trump.

Ajit Pai, a Republican who was named chairman of the telecommunications regulator in January, broke days of silence by rejecting Trump’s tweet that the FCC could challenge the license of NBC after stories Trump declared were not true.

“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content,” Pai said at a forum. “The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment.”

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Democrats had been pushing Pai to denounce Trump’s suggestion that broadcast licenses could be threatened following reports by NBC News that his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had called him a “moron” after a discussion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Trump tweeted last Wednesday.

Trump and his supporters have repeatedly used the term “fake news” to cast doubt on media reports critical of his administration, often without providing any evidence to support their case that the reports were untrue.

Any move to challenge media companies’ licenses, however, would likely face significant hurdles.

The FCC, an independent federal agency, does not license broadcast networks, but issues them to individual broadcast stations that are renewed on a staggered basis for eight-year periods.

Comcast Corp, which owns NBC Universal, also owns 11 broadcast stations, including outlets in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas and Chicago.

When reviewing licenses the FCC must determine if a renewal is in the public interest. Courts have held that a station exercising its First Amendment rights is not adequate grounds to challenge a license.

The agency does not issue similar licenses for cable networks such as CNN and MSNBC, or regulate internet news or other websites.

In the early 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon and his top aides discussed using the FCC’s license renewal process as a way of punishing The Washington Post for its coverage of the Watergate burglary that ultimately brought down his presidency.

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis

A group of cable networks are teaming up to offer the first over-the-top online streaming cable TV package for sports haters.

Philo TV, expected to soft launch within a few weeks, is a sports-free television package of popular cable networks expected to sell for under $20/month.

Instead of ESPN and Fox Sports, Philo TV will concentrate on dramas, documentaries, kids shows, reality television, and original productions aired on cable networks owned by the venture’s partners — Discovery Communications, Viacom, AMC Networks, A+E Networks and Scripps Networks Interactive.

That guarantees networks like Food TV, HGTV, Discovery, AMC, Comedy Central, A&E, Nickelodeon, and other popular general interest cable networks will be on the lineup.

The partners elected to work with Philo TV, an existing venture supplying skinny bundles of cable programming on college campuses around the country. Based on Philo’s college TV lineups, it is not a stretch to assume the new streaming service will also include networks like The Weather Channel, CNN, FOX News, tru-TV, Animal Planet, National Geographic, MSNBC, History Channel, BBC America, Game Show Network, Hallmark, Spike TV, USA, Cartoon Network, Lifetime, Syfy, and perhaps even the Disney Channel.

The service is not expected to include over-the-air stations, but the exclusion of sports means plenty of savings for sports-loathing viewers. Sports programming fees are by far the highest of any network costs for cable and satellite providers. Eliminating costly networks like ESPN saves the average cable company at least $6 a month for that network alone.

The “Philo” venture is named after Philo Farnsworth, the American inventor of an all-electronic television system still partly in use today, which quickly dispensed with the earlier electro-mechanical television systems that preceded it.

Philo isn’t necessarily going to be limited to online streaming. The company is exploring cutting deals with existing phone and cable companies to distribute the package as a competing alternative to today’s bloated cable television packages.

Those interested in being notified about the venture’s imminent launch can register their email address or mobile number on Philo’s website.