Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is now missing from Comcast TV subscribers’ basic package, moved to a high-cost add-on primarily known for its added sports channels.

Xfinity customers must now subscribe to a $9.99 “Sports Entertainment Package” to get the popular commercial-free classic movie channel back on their televisions, and many are howling in anger about the change.

“Comcast’s greed is unparalleled in modern history,” wrote Dennis Haefler. “Big oil, banks, and the railroads of the last century have nothing on Comcast.”

Customers on Comcast’s basic and economy television packages with the fewest channels will have to pay even more than $10 a month to get TCM back. Only customers signed up for at least Xfinity’s 140-channel “Starter” package and up can add the “Sports Entertainment Package” to their lineup. That could cost some as much as $30 more a month to get back a single channel. That add-on package is an odd place to put TCM, considering it is primarily a dumping ground for costly sports networks like NFL RedZone, CBS Sports Network, ESPN Goal Line & Bases Loaded, MLB, and other sports-related channels. To instantly bet on sports, feel free to visit platforms such as Babu88 লগইন করুন.

Comcast told the Atlanta Journal Constitution in a statement it moved TCM because most customers do not watch it:

“Every month, Comcast pays programmers like networks, local TV station owners and others, for the ability to bring their programming to you. We regularly review our programming and sometimes make changes to ensure we’re offering a wide variety of programming at the best value. We look at a variety of factors, including customer viewership and programming costs when making these decisions. Viewership of TCM is low, as over 90% of our customers watch less than two movies per month. Given this and contractual limitations on offering TCM a la carte, we decided to move TCM to the Sports Entertainment Package, which will help us manage programming costs that are passed on to our customers while continuing to make the channel available to those who want to watch it.”

TCM is making available a chart of alternative providers where subscribers can still get TCM without paying for a costly upgrade to get channels many do not want:

Charter Spectrum TV customers will pay at least $94 a month for cable television starting this October, thanks to a sweeping rate increase that will hike the cost of TV packages, internet service, equipment, and fees. Internet customers will soon face a base price for internet service of just under $70 a month.

Cord Cutters News quotes an anonymous source that claims the rate increases will begin in October, and will impact just about every plan except phone service.

The most striking increase is the Broadcast TV Fee, charged to recover the costs imposed by local TV channels. After increasing the price by $2 earlier this year to $11.99, Spectrum customers will now be required to pay $13.50 a month — almost $1.50 more. The Broadcast TV Fee alone will soon amount to $162 a year, just to watch TV stations you can receive over the air for free. Just a year ago, the average Spectrum customer paid a Broadcast TV Fee of $8.75 a month.

A Spectrum receiver is considered required by most customers, and starting this fall, it will cost $7.99 a month to lease one (up about $0.50 a month).

Cable TV packages are also getting more expensive:

• Spectrum TV Select: $72.49 a month (was $64.99 a month)
• Spectrum TV Silver: $92.49 (was $84.99)
• Spectrum TV Gold: $112.49 (was $104.99)

Internet customers will not escape Charter’s rate hikes either. The entry-level package — Spectrum Standard Internet (100 or 200 Mbps in some areas), will increase $4 a month to $69.99. If you use Spectrum’s equipment for Wi-Fi service, your price is increasing $5 a month to $75.99.

Although the rate increases are significant, they are not outlandish when compared with the regular internet-only prices charged by other cable providers:

• Comcast: 150 Mbps (a 1 TB cap applied in most areas) costs $80 plus $13 gateway rental fee = $93/mo
• Cox:  150 Mbps (a 1 TB cap applies in most areas) is priced at $84 a month plus $11 modem rental fee = $95/mo
• Mediacom: 100 Mbps (a 1 TB cap applies) costs $95 a month plus $11.50 modem rental fee = $106.50/mo

Note: Gateway/Modem Rental Fee can be waived if you purchase your own equipment. Prices are lower when bundling, and you may get a better deal threatening to cancel or agreeing to a term plan.

One Wall Street analyst, New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin, predicted in 2017 that the cable industry would use its market power to nearly double rates consumers paid just a few years ago, which for most would mean an internet bill of at least $100 a month.

“We have argued that broadband is underpriced, given that pricing has barely increased over the past decade while broadband utility has exploded,” the researcher said in 2017.

Customers should watch their September bills for Charter Spectrum’s official rate increase notification. Customers on promotional or retention plans are exempt from increases except the Broadcast TV Fee and equipment charges until their promotion expires.

Customers that bundle multiple services will pay slightly lower prices as a result of bundling discounts, but the overall price increase will still be noticeable to most customers.

Cord-cutting is likely to accelerate dramatically because of Spectrum’s TV rate hikes, as customers reassess the value of a basic cable television package that is nearing $100 a month.

GIVE us more money and TAKE what we offer you.

Bloomberg News is reporting what many of you already know — it is getting tougher to get a better deal from your cable or phone company.

As Stop the Cap! has documented since the completion of the Time Warner Cable/Bright House/Charter Spectrum merger in 2016, companies are pulling back on promotions, taking advantage of a lack of competition and offering best pricing only to new customers.

Charter Spectrum and Cable One (soon to be Sparklight) are the most notorious for implementing “take it or leave it” pricing. In fact, one of Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge’s chief complaints about Time Warner Cable was its “Turkish Bazaar” mentality about pricing. Rutledge claimed Time Warner Cable had as many as 90,000 different promotions running at the same time, typically targeted on what other companies were theoretically providing service and how serious the representative felt you were about canceling service. Time Warner Cable had basic retention plans available for regular representatives to offer, better plans for retention specialists to pitch, and the best plans of all to customers complaining on the “executive customer service” line or after filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau. There were plans for complaining over the phone and different plans for complaining at the cable store. Rutledge was horrified, because customers were now well-trained on how to extract a better deal every year when promotions ran out.

Last month, Rutledge said he was indifferent about cash-strapped consumers that cannot afford a runaway cable TV bill on a retired/fixed income or the urban poor who can’t imagine paying $65 a month for basic broadband service. To those customers, pointing to the exit is now perfectly acceptable. In fact, companies make more profit than ever when you drop cable television service and upgrade your broadband connection to a faster speed. That is because there is up to a 90% margin on internet service — provisioned over a network paid off decades ago and designed for much less space efficient analog television. Charging you $20 more for faster internet service is nearly 100% profit and costs most companies next to nothing to offer, and Time Warner Cable executives once laughed off the financial impact of so-called “heavy users,” calling data transport costs mere “rounding errors.” 

Even with a much tougher attitude about discounting service, Charter and Comcast are still adding new broadband customers every month, usually at the expense of phone companies still peddling DSL. So if you cancel, there are probably two new customers ready to replace you, at least for now.

Cable One redefines rapacious pricing. The company specializes in markets where the incumbent phone company is likely to offer low-speed DSL, if anything at all. As a result, they have a comfortable monopoly in many areas and price their service accordingly. Cable One’s basic 200 Mbps plan, with a 600 GB data cap, costs $65 a month, not including the $10.50/mo modem fee, and $2.75 monthly internet service surcharge. To ditch the cap, you will pay another $40 a month — $118.25 total for unlimited internet.

In fact, Cable One charges so much money for internet, they even have Wall Street concerned they are overcharging!

When Joshua May tried calling Spectrum to deal with the 29% more it wanted (around $40 a month) after his promotion expired, the customer service representative told him to go pound salt.

“I expected they’d at least offer free HBO or Showtime,” May, 34, of Springfield, Ohio, told Bloomberg News. “They did nothing.”

He did something. He cut the cord. The representative could have cared less.

The product mix cable and phone companies offer has not really changed, but the era of shoving a triple play bundle of internet, TV, and phone service sure has. Charter and Comcast now treat cable television as a nice extra, not the start of a bundle offer. Broadband is the key item, and the most profitable element, of today’s cable package. Beleaguered phone service gets no respect either. Time Warner Cable used to sell its triple play bundle including a phone line for less money than their double play bundle that omitted it. Today, it’s a simple $9.99/mo extra, given as much attention as a menu offering premium movie channels.

Comcast differs from Charter by offering a plethora of options to their customers. If you don’t want to spend a lot for high speed internet, spend a little less for low speed internet. Their television packages also vary in price and channel selection, often maddeningly including a “must-have” channel in a higher-priced package. Like Spectrum, their phone line is now an afterthought.

AT&T and Verizon have their own approaches to deal with reluctant customers. Verizon FiOS customers face steep price hikes when their promotions expire, but the opportunity to score a better deal is still there, if Verizon is in the mood that quarter. Verizon remains sensitive about their subscriber numbers and growth, so when a quarter looks like it will be difficult, the promotions turn up. AT&T prefers to play a shell game with their customers. Most recently, the company has given a cold shoulder to its U-verse product, treating it like yesterday’s news and best forgotten. AT&T literally markets its own customers to abandon U-verse in favor of AT&T Fiber. Verizon and AT&T treat their DSL customers like they are doing them a favor just by offering any service. All the best deals go to their fiber customers.

AT&T Randall Stephenson is a recent convert to the “who cares about video customers” movement. Services like DirecTV Now were originally channel-rich bargains, but now they are a place for rate hikes and channel deletions. Over a half-million streaming customers have already canceled after the most recent price hikes, but Stephenson claims he does not mind, because those bargain-chasers are low-quality customers worthy of purging. AT&T’s dream customer is one who appreciates whatever AT&T gives them and does not mind a parade of rate hikes.

Comcast’s chief financial officer Mike Cavanagh said it more succinctly: seeking subscribers that “really value video and our bundle despite the increases in prices,” and has “the wallet for a fuller video experience.”

Customers who decide to take their business to a streaming competitor are already learning the industry still has the last laugh. As package prices head north of $50/month, that is not too far off from the pricing offered by cable and phone companies for base video packages. In fact, Spectrum has begun undercutting most streaming providers, offering $15-25 packages of local and/or popular cable channels with a Cloud DVR option for around $5 more a month.

Charter Communications cable TV customers will soon see sweeping rate increases on their cable bills as the cable company announces its 2018 “rate adjustments” that will begin to take effect as early as next month in some markets.

For many customers, it is the second substantial rate increase in a year. Among the most notable are a dramatic hike in equipment rental costs and surcharges.

As Charter Communications took control of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks and introduced Spectrum packages and pricing in 2016 and 2017, company spokesman Justin Venech promised that Spectrum packages were “a better value” for customers, in part because equipment rental fees were substantially lower. But the gap between what Time Warner Cable charged in early 2016 and what Spectrum customers will pay in 2018 is quickly narrowing.

In early 2017, a Spectrum set-top box was priced at $4.99 a month. In mid-2017, the company raised the price to $5.99 a month and starting next month, that rental price is increasing to $6.99 a month per box. Other equipment is getting more costly as well. Time Warner Cable introduced digital transport adapters (DTAs) for secondary analog television sets at $0.99 a month. In 2018, that equipment will cost $4.99 a month. DVR service also increases $1 to $12.99 a month.

Spectrum’s original bundled TV, phone and internet packages — Select, Silver, and Gold were priced at $109.94, $129.94, and $149 a month respectively in 2016, according to the Orange County Register. Los Angeles was among the first markets in the country to obtain new Spectrum packages and pricing in the fall of 2016. Just 15 months later, customers can now expect to pay rates starting at $139.99 for Select, $159.99 for Silver, and $179.99 for Gold.

The company’s hated Broadcast TV Surcharge, which applies to all promotional and regular-priced television packages is also being hiked from $7.50 a month to $8.85.

Among the first markets to see the 2018 rate hike is Lexington, Ky.,  which has had a year-long running battle with Charter Communications.

The mayor is not happy.

“I’m outraged,” Lexington Mayor Jim Gray told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “This is the second rate hike for Spectrum’s cable subscribers in a single year. And considering Spectrum’s record of poor customer service, it just confirms my decision to bring competition and more options to Lexington for cable TV services along with high-speed internet.”

Lexington residents will soon have a third option for cable service in addition to Spectrum, AT&T or CenturyLink: MetroNet — which promises to wire the city with fiber to the home service over the next 3-4 years.

Prices for internet and phone service are unchanged for now, but Charter has often announced rate hikes for those services later in the year, so do not expect rates to remain unchanged throughout 2018.

Spectrum 2018 Cable TV Rate Increases

• Limited Basic TV service: Current price: $15 New Price: $20
• Expanded Basic TV service: Current price: $54.99 New Price: $49.99
• Spectrum Receiver: Current price: $5.99 New Price: $6.99
• Broadcast TV Surcharge: Current price: $7.50 New Price: $8.85
• DTA: Current price: $4.00 New Price: $4.99
• Single DVR Service: Current price: $11.99 New Price: $12.99
• Sports Pass: Current price: $10.00 New Price: $12.00
• Movie Pass: Current price: $10.00 New Price: $12.00
• Triple Play Select: Current price: $129.99 New Price: $139.99
• Triple Play Silver: Current price: $149.99 New price: $159.99
• Triple Play Gold: Current price: $169.99 New Price: $179.99

Consumers who refuse to pay for cable television today still won’t pay for it tomorrow, even if they are offered a slimmed-down “skinny bundle” of cable networks for less money.

Sanford Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger continued a series of focus groups with consumers to find if alternatives to cable television are attractive to consumers. The under-40 sample mixed cord-cutters and current cable and satellite customers and presented them with a range of recently available options from Sling, DirecTVNow and YouTube TV and asked if they would subscribe.

Once again, Juenger discovered the group most likely to subscribe to a cable-TV alternative already had pay television and often paid for the top-tier of service. So far, many of those customers are sampling different services but have not taken the last step of dropping their existing cable television package.

Multichannel News reports most won’t disconnect because of the lack of DVR service from most cable-TV alternatives. Until robust cloud-based DVR service is widely available and not hobbled by a lack of fast-forwarding functionality, new streaming services like DirecTVNow probably will never replace cable television.

Cable-nevers — mostly younger consumers that have never paid for cable television, still don’t seem to be willing to pay for online alternatives either. Most cited the fact they watched individual shows, not channels, and most “skinny bundles” invariably lacked certain networks with the programming they wanted to watch. Many would prefer to subscribe to television shows, not networks.

Cable TV pricing, widely slammed by many customers as too high, didn’t seem to matter as much to those participating in the series of focus groups. When asked what cable networks they would be willing to pay $5 a month each to watch, ESPN was rated on top, followed by Food Network, FX, HGTV, Logo, NBCSN, Syfy and VH1 — many carrying niche shows and original content not available elsewhere. If all eight networks were bundled together, that would cost $40, considerably more than the per channel price of much larger packages.

While older cable subscribers tend to watch programming from the same 6-10 cable networks, younger viewers seek out specific shows, and may not be able to identify what cable networks air them. They also watch on-demand more than older viewers.