John Malone’s Liberty Global has bought out Puerto Rico’s second biggest cable television operator — Choice Cable TV — and will convert its customers to Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico.

Liberty joined Searchlight Capital Partners to close the $272.5 million purchase, which will make Liberty Puerto Rico’s largest cable company, passing more than one million homes and serving about 750,000 customers.

Liberty put $267.5 million of the purchase on its credit card, using debt borrowing from another Malone-controlled entity — Liberty Cablevision — to fund most of the deal. Liberty Global contributed just $10.2 million in equity and its partner Searchlight kicked in $6.8 million in equity.

The deal gives Malone’s company a total cable monopoly on the island. Choice Cable was the last standing cable operator not owned by Liberty, and served customers in western, southern, and central Puerto Rico. Choice itself consolidated several independent cable operators, including Cable TV Northwest (Aguadilla), Dom’s Cable TV (San Germán), Cablevision Mayaguez and TelePonce Cable TV. Now it has been consolidated itself.

Choice Cable used to offer service in these Puerto Rican communities. Most of the rest of the island is served by Liberty Cablevision, which will now have a total cable monopoly across the unincorporated U.S. territory.

According to Liberty Global, the combined cable company will be expected to generate at least $390 million in annual revenue. If it doesn’t, rate increases could be on the way. Channel changes have already been introduced.

Liberty Puerto Rico added 18 new channels to the Choice Cable lineup at no extra cost. The Choice Pak package includes the new channels: AMC, AXS TV, beIN in Spanish and English, Cablevision, Disney Jr., Fox Sports 1, FX, Lifetime Real Women and PBS Kids. The Top Choice package will include: Crime & Investigation, DIY, Esquire, Fox Sports 2, History in Spanish, IFC, Military History and NBA TV.

But several other channels will be dropped: MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Spike, TV Land and Palladia HD. These Viacom-owned channels were discontinued last year by Liberty in a dispute over programming fees.

Liberty intends to offer up to 120/4Mbps Internet speeds, over 100 HD channels (352 channels total), and a “better balance of English and Spanish language networks” to current Choice customers.

Time Warner Cable’s nationwide channel realignment, gradually rolling out across all Time Warner Cable systems, arrives in Albany and Rochester in New York and western Massachusetts next month. It is the cable company’s biggest channel numbering change in over a decade.

Time Warner is realigning almost every channel numbered over 100 into new theme-based categories to help customers find programming more easily. When the changes are complete, customers across the country will find most of the same networks on the same channel numbers regardless of where they live. Channels numbered 1-99 are not changing.

The new national unified lineup could mean more channels for some. For example, customers in Rochester will begin to receive several time-shifted west coast feeds of premium movie channels, the addition of Chinese Central State Television’s English language news network, Esquire TV, QVC Plus, Women’s Entertainment SD/HD (We), and the reintroduction of the Game Show Network. ESPN 3D is being dropped.

The channel changes are causing some controversy in Albany because Time Warner is moving adult networks including Hustler TV, Penthouse On Demand, Manhandle, and Outrageous TV to channel positions that will soon be vacated by Albany’s local broadcast stations.

The changes take effect:

• Oct. 8: Albany, Amsterdam, Canajoharie, Cobleskill, Gloversville, Kinderhook, Rensselaer, and Schenectady, N.Y.
• Oct. 10: Battenkill, Clifton Park, Crown Point, Glens Falls, Hague, Hoosick, Port Henry, Putnam, Queensbury, Saratoga Springs, Schroon Lake, Ticonderoga, and Troy, N.Y.
• Oct. 10: Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, North Adams, Pittsfield, Sheffield, and Stockbridge, Mass.
• Oct. 15: Rochester and its nearby suburbs across most of Monroe County, N.Y.
• Oct. 17: Cayuga, Erie (East), Genesee, Livingston, Niagara, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Seneca, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates Counties, N.Y.

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Time Warner Cable introduces customers to their new unified nationwide television lineup, coming soon to your Time Warner Cable system. (2 minutes)

The new genre categories and their channel numbers:

The new lineup no longer includes separate HD and SD channels of each network. Instead, Time Warner’s HD set-top boxes will be programmed to show the best signal available, usually HD. SD converters, meanwhile, will show only SD channels.

Time Warner Cable premiered its new lineup in Syracuse and surrounding areas in central New York back in June. The company will continue to gradually roll out the channel changes in other cities this fall and winter.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WRGB Albany TWC Changing Channels 9-5-13.flv[/flv]

WRGB in Albany reports some Time Warner customers looking for their local television stations after the channel realignment will instead end up on the cable company’s adult entertainment tier, invited to subscribe with the push of a few buttons on the remote control. (2 minutes)

Time Warner Cable customers in Central New York will be the first to test the cable company’s newest plan for a nationwide channel realignment that will move almost every cable channel into a new “theme-based” lineup.

Starting June 18, customers in Syracuse and suburbs, Auburn, Cortland, Fulton, Oswego and the Rome/Oneida/Camden/Sylvan Beach area will have to hunt for their favorite networks in a new lineup numbered from channels 1 to 1999. Two days later, customers in Jefferson and Lewis Counties, plus Boonville, Champlain, Malone, Massena, Ogdensburg and Potsdam will see their lineup changed. On June 25, the same will happen in Candor, Hamilton, Ilion, Old Forge, Ithaca, Utica and the Tri-Lakes area.

Channels 1-99, mostly received by analog television customers, will be unaffected for now.

Time Warner Cable has used a theme/genre-based channel lineup for several years, but new or renamed networks have occasionally turned up in unexpected places. The increasing prevalence of HD networks has also made a mess of things, with some markets featuring HD basic cable networks nestled between premium movie channels. The channel realignment is designed to “simplify” things.

Among the welcome changes: HD viewers will automatically receive the HD version of those networks and channels, if available. DVRs will automatically map scheduled recordings to their new channel numbers.

If the channel changes prove successful, which we assume means subscriber backlash is not judged too great, Time Warner Cable customers across the country will begin to see the same channel lineup changes in their areas beginning this August.

Here is a guide to the new lineup. Note the block dedicated to HD networks is gone:

• 1-99: Remain unchanged and are watched mostly by analog viewers with or without a set-top box
• 100s: Entertainment, Life and Style channels
• 200-249: News and Information
• 250-270: Children/Family
• 285-299: Music TV
• 300s: Sports
• 460-479: Religion
• 480-499: Shopping
• 500-649: Premium movie channels
• 650-654: Pay per view
• 670-699: 3D television networks
• 700-799: Premium sports packages
• 800-999: Latino/Spanish programming
• 1000-1199: On-demand channels
• 1200-1399: Local channels
• 1400-1799: International/Ethnic language channels
• 1800-1899: Adult Entertainment
• 1900-1999: Music Choice

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Time Warner Cable produced this video to introduce Central New York customers to the new channel lineup that will likely soon be in place across all Time Warner Cable service areas.  (2 minutes)

As Time Warner Cable continues it channel re-alignments in markets across the country, some subscribers are coming up with fewer channels after the changes, but they are still paying the same cable bill — for fewer channels.

“It’s classic cable bait and switch,” shares Stop the Cap! reader Kyle from Kansas City, who spent hours fiddling with his TiVo box after Time Warner re-mapped the area’s channel lineup earlier this month.  “TiVo really underlined it for us, albeit unintentionally, when we discovered several channels no longer available to us unless we paid extra.”

While Time Warner Cable moved Kansas City to its theme-based lineup, which places similar channels together and aligns HD channels with their standard definition counterparts, they also used the occasion to re-tier some of their “free” channels into mini-pay tiers.

Among the channels out of the digital cable standard lineup:

• Encore MoviePlex — Seven theme-based commercial-free movie channels;
• IFC — Independent Film Channel
• Fox Movie Channel
• Flix
• RFD-TV
• Ovation

The movie channels are being re-tiered in a mini-pay package called TWC Movie Pass, which will eventually sell for $4.95 per month after some early promotional discounts.  RFD and Ovation are part of a new “Digital Choice” tier.

“It’s the usual deception from Time Warner, which claims to sell you ‘free HD’ service without also telling you a rented set top box is required, which adds at least $7 a month for the ‘free HD’ channels,” Kyle says.  “Now they don’t even give you that as they start stripping networks away from their HD lineup to sell you for more money.”

Some subscribers are less than happy with the outcome, considering they now have fewer channels and are still paying the same cable rate they were before the channel change.

“It’s a shell game they always win — find the channels, keep your eye on the channels, wait — they are gone.  Pay us anyway.”

Aaron Barnhart, who writes for the Kansas City Star, called it a PR failure.

“Time Warner proved once again to be its own worst enemy, hyping all the good things and leaving it to customers to discover the not-so-good-things on their own,” Barnhart wrote.

Time Warner’s reasons for the channel changes, reported by Barnhart, seemed less than convincing to customers.

Time Warner’s spokesman Matt Derrick pointed out that “in most places, Encore is bundled as a premium package with Starz.” Liberty Media, which owns both Encore and Starz, used to offer Encore to cable operators as a digital-cable value alternative to premium channels. But that has changed, and Time Warner negotiated this 12-month rate with Liberty to encourage customers to go along with the switch.

Derrick explained that Digital Choice was designed as a low-cost alternative to its larger Digital Variety package, where the same channels are also available.

“Wait, that doesn’t even make sense,” Kyle argues.  “Time Warner negotiated with Liberty to turn a free set of channels into a pay tier to encourage us to go along?”

Kyle doesn’t think the reasons for Digital Choice made any sense either.

“How many people are demanding to pay extra for Ovation and RFD, exactly?” Kyle wonders.  “What is missing from all this is why our rates did not decrease to compensate us for the lost channels.”

Kyle says the $4.95 a month rate for TWC Movie Pass may not seem as much as a pay network, but he reminds us Time Warner will continue to collect money from every subscriber for the channels they’ll no longer get.

“So if it costs them $4.95 a month for Encore, we’re all still paying that because our bill isn’t going down; if we actually want those channels, that costs another $4.95 — $9.90 a month.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WLWT Cincinnati Time Warner Channel Realignment 4-18-11.mp4[/flv]

WLWT-TV in Cincinnati explains to certain Ohio viewers how to accomplish a needed channel “re-scan” that comes along with the channel re-alignments Time Warner Cable is performing across the country.  (2 minutes)

Some Time Warner customers think there is more up the cable company's sleeve than "subscriber convenience."

Time Warner Cable customers across the country have been coping with some dramatic channel realignments over the past year, in some cases finding as many as a half-dozen channels gone missing from their analog basic cable lineup when it’s all said and done.

Communities in South Carolina, Ohio, and Nebraska are the latest to find dozens of channels assuming new positions on the dial, some now requiring a $7-10 digital set top box rental to keep watching.

The reasons for the changes?  To make room for an increasing number of HD channels, upgrade to DOCSIS 3 technology to support faster broadband, and to simplify finding networks on a lineup with hundreds of choices.

In Lincoln, Neb., Time Warner Cable will be aligning all of their analog and digital standard definition channel numbers with their HD counterparts.  So if CNN occupies channel 120 on the standard definition cable lineup, CNN HD will be found on channel 1120.  Customers simply have to add a “1” in front of the three digit channel number to get the same network, when available, in HD.

Lincoln residents may appreciate the fact some channels will be easier to find, but many analog customers without a cable box are not happy several of those channels will be gone from their lineup altogether.  The “victims” of the analog to digital switcheroo are familiar to those who have already been through channel realignments — C-SPAN 2, ShopNBC, TruTV, Travel Channel, and Oxygen will be available only to those who have a digital cable box or CableCARD.

In the Myrtle Beach, S.C., area, Time Warner Cable also moved the Speed channel to a new digital-only home.  Brett Phillips who lives in Georgetown called that a hidden price increase, telling The Sun News Time Warner was effectively taking away a channel while not reducing his cable bill.

In Nebraska and Ohio, Time Warner is handing out “free” digital boxes for 12 months, but only to those who do not have one now.  Those with existing digital boxes cannot obtain a second one or get their existing box for free.  Some critics, including our Lincoln reader Marta says that is a ripoff.

“As a good customer who already pays for two digital boxes and spends almost $200 a month on my cable service, why am I paying for my digital boxes when those who want the lowest priced analog service get one for free,” Marta asks.  “Clearly this is a way to get those boxes into peoples’ homes so at the end of the year they will reluctantly pay for the $7 a month to keep renting it.”

Marta was turned down when she asked if she could get a free extra box for her kitchen television.

“No, Time Warner only gives these free boxes to people who never had them before,” she said.  “I understand the company needs to make room for new things, but they have got to get these box prices down — they could turn the whole system digital as far as I care -if- the boxes were free, or at least much cheaper.”

Some other subscribers have their own conspiracy theories about the channel realignments.

One Nebraska resident noted Time Warner Cable was moving Fox News Channel to channel 44 — an ominous turn of events for this individual:

“It seems that the liberal unionized TWC is putting Fox News on channel 44. Obama is the 44th President. [George] Soros is behind this I just know it.”

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WEWS-TV in Cleveland and KSHB-TV in Kansas City tell their respective viewers about the grand shuffle in their channel lineups.  (3 minutes)