Comcast rates are going up again this fall in the Pacific Northwest, now exceeding $70 a month.

At least 600,000 cable customers in Oregon and southwestern Washington will pay 4.4 percent more for 100-channel television service beginning this October, raising the cost of Standard basic cable to $70.49 a month.

Despite threats of cord cutting, customers in the Pacific Northwest have remained loyal to the idea of paying for television, according to Fred Christ, policy director for the Metropolitan Area Cable Commission in Washington County.

“Subscriber numbers remain steady,” Christ told The Oregonian. “People still don’t see an easy alternative to Comcast, Frontier (FiOS TV), or the satellite providers, all of which cause more or less the same amount of pain.”

The newspaper notes sports programming may not be the cause of this year’s rate increase.

The cost of Comcast’s discounted “Digital Economy” cable package, which excludes most expensive sports networks, is rising at nearly double the rate of Standard Cable, up 8.6 percent this fall to $37.95 a month.

For those who cannot afford traditional Standard cable television, Comcast’s limited basic service, which primarily consists of local TV channels, runs $12-22 a month depending on the customer’s location. It also increased in price by about $1.30 a month in August.

Comcast may not mind cord cutters too much, because it reaps significant profits from the broadband service that powers online viewing. Comcast raised speeds from 15 to 20Mbps last spring along with the price. The popular “Performance” tier now costs $53.95 a month.

Comcast is testing the reintroduction of usage caps in a handful of service areas, typically providing up to 300GB of usage per month before overlimit fees kick in. But those Internet usage limits do not yet apply in the Pacific Northwest.

Comcast blamed the rate increases on network enhancement investments including faster Internet speeds, more multi platform video and better customer service. Comcast is currently introducing its new X1 cable box that makes finding programming easier.

Customers can avoid the worst of the price increases by choosing a bundled service package, which will see a lower rate increase. Current customers can also call Comcast to negotiate a better deal by threatening to cancel service.

Sony’s bid to enter the “over-the-top” online video business has gotten a shot in the arm with news it has reached a preliminary agreement with Viacom, Inc., to carry its popular cable networks on the Japanese electronics giant’s planned online subscription TV service.

Sony wants to build its own virtual cable television service, offering live and on-demand programming delivered over broadband lines in direct competition with cable and phone companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon.

Getting agreements with traditional must-have cable networks like Comedy Central, ESPN, and USA have been difficult because the networks fear alienating their traditional customers — large cable, telco and satellite TV companies.

The Wall Street Journal reports Viacom’s agreement remains preliminary at the moment and the final details have yet to be worked out. If a final agreement is reached, it will be a breakthrough for so-called online cable systems which have gotten nowhere with other cable network owners, including Comcast-NBC, Walt Disney, Time Warner, and CBS.

Cable executives have repeatedly warned that a wider distribution of cable network programming would make them more reluctant to pay higher prices for the cable networks because of the loss of relative exclusivity. Many cable programming contracts restrict the ability of network owners to sell to would-be online competitors.

Viacom has had contentious relationships with cable and satellite companies in the past, so observers suggest it is no surprise Viacom would be among the first to break with tradition. Viacom’s CEO, Sumner Redstone, also controls CBS which is currently off Time Warner Cable systems in three major cities and has had its pay movie channels Showtime and The Movie Channel blacked out on Time Warner systems nationwide. If Sony’s service gets off the ground, CBS could ask Time Warner customers to sign up with Sony instead to get those networks back.

Cord Cutting is Real (Graphics: The Wall Street Journal)

Competing online video services from Intel and Google have largely gone nowhere because of stalled programming negotiations. How Sony managed a breakthrough remains a mystery. To secure rights, Sony may have been asked to sign a lengthy contract with favorable financial terms for Viacom, or Sony might have agreed to carry the full roster of Viacom-owned cable networks, which include:

The next generation of the Sony PlayStation may be your next cable box.

• BET
• CMT
• Comedy Central
• Logo
• MTV
• MTV2
• Nick at Nite
• Nick Jr.
• Nickelodeon
• Nicktoons
• Palladia
• Spike
• TeenNick
• Tr3s
• TV Land
• VH1

A source told the Journal Sony hopes to launch its new venture by the end of the year, perhaps on the next generation of Sony’s PlayStation gaming console due soon. Sony also could offer the service on its line of Bravia high-definition televisions, as well as tablets and smartphones.

The Journal:

People who have seen demonstrations of Sony’s system say it has some features that are appealing in comparison to traditional pay TV distributors, including one that recommends shows for users based on what they’ve previously watched. Content providers are allowed to supply some of those recommendations, so they can steer users to other episodes on their channels, according to the people familiar with the matter. Sony provides other content suggestions for viewers based on an algorithm.

The development of online cable television in direct competition with large cable and phone companies could spark a new wave of broadband usage restrictions including usage caps and metered billing. The same telecom companies that earn a substantial part of their revenue selling cable television service are likely to find it unsettling to discover Sony undercutting them on price and using “their” broadband lines to do it. Placing restrictions on the amount of broadband traffic a customer can use each month would deliver a significant deterrent to would-be cord cutters.

If Time Warner Cable is concerned about the rising cost of cable television, it sure didn’t show it after sources revealed the cable company quickly accepted CBS’ demands for more compensation but is refusing to budge until it wins rights to show CBS programming on mobile platforms.

Sources tell the Daily News Time Warner quickly agreed to a major increase from 50 cents a month per subscriber to $2 a month for CBS content, but is keeping CBS-owned stations and cable networks off the dial until the network agrees to let the cable company distribute on-demand and live programming on cell phones, tablets, and personal computers.

Earlier this week, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt made an offer CBS couldn’t wait to refuse: the cable company would put CBS programming back on the lineup if it could be sold to customers a-la-carte instead of bundling it with other channels.

That would “allow customers to decide for themselves how much value they ascribe to CBS programming,” Britt said in a letter to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves that was promptly posted online.

CBS called the idea a sham, noting a-la-carte runs contrary to the economic model the cable industry itself regularly and loudly defends. Try telling ESPN, which costs every cable subscriber more than $5 a month, it will now be offered only to customers that want to pay for it.

Phillip “Capitulation Corner” Dampier

In fact, for most cable operators, the concept of selling customers only the channels they want is the nightmare scenario. Average revenue per subscriber would tumble as consumers rid themselves of networks with three digit channel numbers they didn’t even know they had. Goodbye ‘Yarn Creations’ on Generic Home Shopping Channel 694, Bosnian music videos, reruns of Simon and Simon, mysterious networks showing episodes of Law & Order that USA Network already burned into your permanent memory, and that “fine arts” network that shows endless hours of Antiques Roadshow dating back to 1998.

Digital rights is an important issue for both cable companies and programmers. Although both sides deny “cord cutting” is real, the intensity of the fight allowing online viewing says otherwise. If CBS gives away rights to Time Warner Cable to show live and on-demand programming to subscribers, CBS can’t make as much money offering shows on its own website (with its own ads), much less sell programming to customers. Time Warner fears if CBS only offers online programming through its own website, customers might decide they don’t need the cable company to watch those shows any longer.

“At the moment the cable operators have the leverage because the more that CBS is off the cable, the more that they realize the viewers don’t need it,” said media expert Michael Wolf, former Yahoo! board member and president of Viacom-owned MTV Networks.

For now, many viewers are turning to pirate video sites to catch the CBS shows they are missing. TorrentFreak reports huge spikes in illicit download traffic of CBS content over the weekend. Under the Dome was the source of much of the spike, although customers are also downloading pirated copies of Showtime programming. The evidence is clear: take away popular programming and customers will simply download it illegally from third-party websites.

As summer wanes and the fall football season approaches, just about everyone expects the war will quickly end, because football fans are more than willing to drop a provider if they can’t spend several hours in front of the television Sunday afternoon. Considering Time Warner has reportedly already caved in on CBS’ money demands, it is likely CBS will be able to eventually extract even more money from the cable company to secure digital distribution rights. Subscribers will pick up the tab for both during the next round of rate increases beginning this fall in the south and by January in the northeast.

Time Warner Cable’s latest regulatory notice admits current deals with more than 50 networks are due to expire soon, and the company may cease the carriage of one or more of the networks. They include: Lifetime, E!, Style, Turner Classic Movies, and the NHL Network. So just like Law & Order reruns, we will see this episode again in the near future.

The PGA is offering a way for golf fans to watch some of the PGA Championship online, bypassing the CBS-TWC dispute.

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Perhaps the biggest loss viewers without CBS will experience this weekend is the PGA Championship. CNBC talks with tournament officials in Rochester, N.Y., about the possibility of viewing alternatives. But golf fans can watch parts of the tournament for free from the PGA’s website. (3 minutes)

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Bloomberg News reports that while many cable viewers could care less about the loss of CBS and Showtime, broadband customers may care very much when cable operators start charging extra for Netflix or add punitive usage caps to make sure customers don’t cut cable TV’s cord. (3 minutes)

Cablevision may eventually get out of the cable television business.

Although industry analysts, consumer advocates, and technology columnists have long proclaimed the era of “cord cutting” is upon us, cable operators have always been in denial the product that got them their multi-billion dollar business — selling packages of television channels — is rapidly becoming obsolete.

But at least one CEO sees the writing on the wall.

If you don’t “ride the wave” you “get eaten by the wave,” declared Cablevision CEO James Dolan.

The Wall Street Journal sat down for a lengthy interview with Dolan, who predicted “there could come a day” when the cable television company quits selling television service, because a growing number of viewers have shifted to online video.

Dolan, like many Americans, isn’t watching television as much as he used to, and admitted that both he and his young children prefer spending their viewing time with Netflix, not Cablevision’s television package.

Jim Dolan

Dolan worries the next generation of television viewers don’t need or want a cable television package with hundreds of video channels. Today’s youth wants fast broadband with on-demand viewing of series, movies, and video clips. The transition may have already started. Cablevision reported Aug. 2 it lost 20,000 video customers over the last three months, many moving to broadband-only service and 11,000 abandoned the cable company altogether.

Dolan believes the industry is setting itself up for obsolescence.

“I don’t want to be saddled with an infrastructure that is as big as the one that I have now,” Dolan told the Journal, fearing the bloated cable television package is becoming too costly and unmanageable.

Instead, Dolan has ordered network upgrades to improve broadband service and help boost the company’s image with customers. Cablevision focused most of its spending on broadband and Wi-Fi service upgrades over the past year, both to meet relentless competition with Verizon’s fiber network FiOS, but also to develop the platform Dolan thinks will eventually be the only product the company sells. Although Cablevision cannot match Verizon’s upload speeds, the cable company offers a free Wi-Fi service for customers Verizon lacks. But the changes and network upgrades have been expensive and noticeable, because few cable operators are spending as much as Cablevision to improve service.

The changes in approach were too much for former chief operating officer Thomas Rutledge, who departed Cablevision to run Charter Cable in December 2011.

One of the primary reasons Rutledge left was Dolan’s increasing involvement in the business, causing a clash of business philosophies. Just a few months before Rutledge departed, the FCC issued a report that exposed Cablevision marketing broadband speeds its network could not sustain, especially during prime usage periods. Rutledge believed this was primarily a marketing problem. Dolan concluded the existing broadband infrastructure was inadequate.

“I felt that we needed to reinvest,” Dolan said. “When we took a hard look at what we were offering,… it just wasn’t what we wanted it to be.”

As Rutledge and his allies rapidly departed for Charter Cable, Dolan ordered a 32 percent increase in capital spending to $1.1 billion last year, at least $150 million targeted exclusively on broadband improvements. This year he has already informed Wall Street it will be more of the same, bringing expanded Wi-Fi, new and improved broadband modems for customers, even faster speeds, new outage detection equipment, and an improved cloud-based DVR service.

Existing customers like the changes, but don’t appreciate the price hikes that have accompanied them. Wall Street has the exact opposite point of view, welcoming increased revenue from rate hikes, but concerned about the company’s spending. Investors complain Cablevision’s returns are well below those of other cable operators which don’t face the Verizon FiOS juggernaut.

Still, for some customers, the changes have come too late and Verizon’s promotional offers to switch to fiber have been too good. Cablevision did at least manage to add 1,000 new broadband and 3,000 new voice customers during the second quarter.

“We’re not prepared to starve the business,” said chief financial officer Gregg Seibert. “In terms of upgrades, I think what you’re seeing with the high-speed rollout that we just did is that we feel that our plant is in very good condition. We’re delivering over advertised speeds in every day part. We intend to keep the plant in that type of condition.”

Dolan’s philosophy of upgrading service to improve customer relations also clashes with John Malone, who is rebuilding his cable industry power base at Rutledge’s new home — Charter Cable. Malone believes industry consolidation, not expensive network upgrades, is a better proposition for shareholders.

Dolan told investors Cablevision is, for now, out of the mergers and acquisitions business. It has completed selling off its Optimum West systems to Charter and plans no further expeditionary buyouts in the near future. Instead, the company intends to focus on its business in the northeast. Dolan acknowledged the company is a likely acquisition target, most likely by Charter or Time Warner Cable.

Dolan currently shows little interest in selling out what is and always has been a family affair. Chuck Dolan, 86, founded Cablevision and still offers almost daily advice to his son James, who now runs the business. James also appointed his wife Kristin to lead sales, marketing and product management, with questionable results.

Some other highlights from the second quarter:

• Cablevision has enhanced its Remote Storage DVR product, now providing two tiers: 160GB and 500GB. Customers can record up to 10 channels at the same time. The service is available on customers’ existing set-top boxes;
• Last month, Cablevision announced an increase in our broadband data speeds;
• Wi-Fi remains a major priority for Cablevision and customer usage of its wireless network continues to grow. More than 1 million customers have used the service over more than 90,000 access points;
• Price increases were critical for Cablevision’s revenue growth this year. The company booked increased revenue from a broad-based $5 broadband rate hike implemented in January as well as a “sports programming surcharge” initiated earlier this year. The average subscriber that buys a package including cable television pays $5.49 more this year than last — $162.42 a month.

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The Wall Street Journal sat down with Cablevision CEO James Dolan, discussing the future of the business as the industry watches another cable television programming dispute between Time Warner Cable and CBS.  (5 minutes)

Time Warner Cable admitted this morning extracting more revenue from existing customers was more important than attracting new ones, and long time subscribers responded by canceling service in above average numbers.

In a conference call largely hosted by incoming CEO Robert Marcus, a number of Wall Street analysts listened to Marcus’ vision for Time Warner under his forthcoming leadership. Marcus offered competing, potentially incompatible visions in his defense of a lackluster quarter: charge existing customers higher prices for service to boost average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) while also improving the customer-company relationship.

For most of 2013, Time Warner has been aggressively moving away from heavily discounted promotional offers to attract customers. Both outgoing CEO Glenn Britt and Marcus have repeatedly stressed heavy discounting of service during the past two years is now over, and the company is looking forward to resetting prices higher when the promotions end later this year.

It is part of the company’s plan to “drive better performance in the residential business.” An unfortunate side effect is that the company continues to lose video and phone customers and its broadband service growth has been so slow, one analyst called it “anemic.” The company’s quarterly results show Time Warner added only 8,000 new broadband customers in the last three months. The company still earned $1.42 billion from broadband sales alone over the last three months, mostly because of rising broadband bills.

Courtesy: Jacobson

Offsetting that growth, TWC lost 191,000 residential video subscribers, leaving it with about 11.9 million video customers. At least 56,000 customers also pulled the plug on Time Warner Cable telephone service.

“As we discussed before, this [new pricing] approach represents a conscious decision to pursue subscribers with higher ARPU, higher profit and lower churn even if that means fewer connects,” said Marcus as he defended the results. “So it’s not a surprise that as in the first quarter of 2013, subscriber net adds were down in the second quarter on a year-over-year basis.”

As customers deal with increasing prices for cable television and broadband service and the irritation of modem rental fees, many are cutting back on their packages to keep their bill stable.

Marcus admitted customer sign ups of triple play — phone, broadband, and cable TV service — were way down in the second quarter and a lot fewer single and double-play customers were convinced to upgrade. The company’s promotional offers have come with a higher price and slower broadband service, often only 3Mbps.

In a number of markets, especially in the midwest, customers are shopping around for other providers. They are finding AT&T U-verse to be a formidable competitor.

“Throughout the quarter, U-verse was pretty aggressive with a beacon price of $79 for their triple play and $49 for their double play,” said Marcus. “I would characterize those as aggressive promotional prices, and they had an impact. I would say that the impact was more pronounced as the quarter wore on. We’ve now responded to that in the market, and I expect that our relative performance should improve there.”

But for much of the rest of the country where competition is less robust, Time Warner intends to continue to hold the line on pricing and resist discounting even if it means subscribers threaten to cancel.

Time Warner Cable has gotten itself ready for an onslaught of unhappy customers, assigning nearly 1,000 employees to staff four national customer retention centers dedicated to trying to persuade customers not to leave. But these specially trained representatives have a dual mission — keep customers with Time Warner Cable, but don’t give away the store doing so.

Stock buybacks and shareholder dividends were a major priority for Time Warner Cable’s cash on hand.

“Not only are our reps saving more customers, they are also preserving more ARPU among the customers they save,” said Marcus. “As promotional roll-offs peak in the second half of 2013, we expect that our new retention capabilities will drive better revenue growth.”

In the broadband market, Time Warner changed little in the second quarter except to raise prices on service and equipment. Marcus could only point to the addition of 3,500 new Wi-Fi hotspots, mostly in New York City, as its signature achievement over the past three months.

On the residential side, broadband revenues were up 12.5%, but most of that growth came from a combination of the modem lease fee, an increase in the number of 30/5 and 50/5Mbps customers and a successful Turbo promotion.

Results for video and voice were considerably worse. Revenues were down about 4%.

But the company managed to report its highest ARPU ever, with customers now paying an average of more than $105 a month for Time Warner service. Most of that increase came from rising broadband prices.

Time Warner Cable has also been preoccupied with spending excess cash on hand to buy back its own stock, which creates shareholder value. Time Warner expects to spend at least $2.5 billion on stock buybacks this year. Shareholders also received $829 million in dividends (113% of Time Warner’s free cash flow).

“We repurchased 6.6 million shares for $638 million, and through July, we have repurchased approximately 83 million shares at an average cost of around $78.50 per share since we began the program in November of 2010,” reported chief financial officer Arthur T. Minson.

Time Warner Cable’s Board of Directors recently approved increasing spending up to $4 billion on stock buybacks.

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WRGB in Albany reports Time Warner Cable customers are angry about another price hike on the company’s modem lease fee effective Aug. 18. WRGB recommends customers buy their own modems to avoid the fee. Time Warner Cable’s Glenn Britt admitted earlier the fee is really just a hidden rate increase. (3 minutes)