Shaw Cable Turns Down Deal to Buy Three TV Stations for $1 Each

Shaw Cable, a Canadian cable operator, yesterday announced it would not proceed with a deal to purchase three CTV-owned television stations in Canada for $1 each.

CTVglobemedia, owner of Canada’s largest commercial television network, said it could no longer profitably run the stations unless Canadian regulators allowed them to charge cable operators “carriage fees” for carrying the TV stations on cable systems.  Shaw, owner of one such cable system, strongly rejected the idea and agreed to purchase the stations after CTV offered to sell them for just one Canadian loonie each.

Yesterday, CTV announced Shaw would not be proceeding with the deal, although Shaw has yet to publicly comment.

The three stations, a CTV affiliate in Brandon, Manitoba and two “A” network affiliates in Windsor and Wingham, Ontario, were planned to be shut down by August if buyers could not be found.

Had Canadian regulators agreed to cable carriage fees, it would have brought an additional $300 million in revenue to CTVglobemedia.

As the economy continues to struggle, many smaller Canadian cities could potentially lose network affiliated TV stations that have been running unprofitably in the difficult current economic climate.  The CRTC (similar to the FCC in the United States) plans to release details of a new Local Programming Improvement Fund, designed to help underwrite expenses at Canadian stations serving fewer than one million viewers, early this month.

Charter Cable: Using Customer Theft Allegations As A Sales Opportunity?

Charter Cable "Cable Theft" Door Tag

The Savvy Consumer, a blog run by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, today shared the story of one customer who contacted the paper to say he found a doorknob hanging flier on his front door that accused him of what the paper called “cable theft”:

During a check of our cable television lines, we discovered your residence is receiving services that are not in your current subscription plan. Based on this information all unauthorized services have been disconnected. If there is an error in our records, please call the number below and we will correct the matter immediately.

The customer called Charter Cable, his local cable operator to protest the flier and claim innocence.

When he reached a representative from the cable company, [he/she] “quickly launched into sales mode and gave him the hard sell on a bundled cable-Internet-phone package.”

“The accused thinks the fliers are just a gimmick to generate sales leads,” The Savvy Consumer writes.

Most cable operators perform regular “system audits” of their service areas, looking for services still activated for customers that operators forgot to disconnect, active cable theft by customers hooking into cable lines themselves, or customers using modified equipment to steal scrambled/encrypted channels.

Many operators do approach customers they feel may be receiving services to which they are not entitled by inviting them to “get legal” and sign up for an authorized package of services, often at the same promotional rates given to new customers.  Many also run “amnesty programs” to let customers get legitimate service without fear of legal penalties for turning themselves in.

Egregious theft of service is prosecuted by the industry, but most have traditionally first tried persuasion to sign up customers before getting law enforcement involved.  They are far less charitable dealing with those who modify and sell equipment to others designed to steal service.

The Savvy Consumer asks any St. Louis-area customers who have received one of these Charter fliers, or otherwise been falsely accused of stealing cable to contact mhathaway@post-dispatch.com with your story.

Atlantic Broadband Adds 14 HD Channels to Aiken, SC Channel Lineup

Atlantic Broadband, an independent cable operator/overbuilder today announced the addition of 14 new high definition channels to the Aiken, South Carolina channel lineup:

• ABC Family
• Bravo
• CNBC
• CNN
• Encore
• Food Network
• Fox News
• F/X
• HGTV
• The History Channel
• Lifetime
• National Geographic
• Science Channel
• The Weather Channel

With the addition of these networks, Atlantic Broadband is also discontinuing its $12 HD Extra Tier.  Customers subscribing to either the “value” or “digital” packages will find 45 HD channels available to them at no additional cost.

Atlantic Broadband serves 21,000 South Carolina customers in Aiken, Allendale, Barnwell, and Bamberg counties.  The company acquired the cable system from G Force in 2006, joining 260,000 customers served by Atlantic Broadband in Florida, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.  Atlantic is the nation’s 15th largest cable provider.

Comcast’s Efforts to Decommission Analog Cable Channels Can Have Unfortunate Side Effects

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, has been aggressively seeking to decommission many of its analog channels to free up spectrum to carry the increasing number of digital High Definition cable networks and local stations on its cable systems.

WEIU-TV Charleston, Illinois

In addition to subscribers facing the expense and inconvenience of placing a digital converter box on every cable-wired television in the house, those channels and networks bumped from analog sometimes find themselves stuck in Digital Siberia, with a channel number in the hundreds, often lost amidst hundreds of other channels.

WEIU, a secondary PBS station serving viewers in central eastern Illinois, found itself in such a predicament in April, given a choice by the cable operator to either remain on analog, to be phased out down the road, or agree to be placed on the digital tier, where it would also be granted a second TV channel to carry “WEIU World” and a radio station, where it could be received beyond its normal coverage area.

WEIU management opted for the latter, and digital customers found WEIU on Channel 14 and Channel 189. Analog customers found themselves out of luck, unless they agreed to pay a monthly fee for a set top converter box, ranging in price from $1.38 for “basic analog” tier customers to $3.48 for “standard analog” tier customers. Many standard analog customers found a cheaper option – the Digital Starter service for $1.99 a month.

WEIU serves central Illinois

Comcast, like many cable operators, reached an agreement with PBS to carry just one primary PBS local station on analog in most communities. As Champaign is already served by primary PBS affiliate WILL-TV, WEIU left analog behind.

Unfortunately, a side effect of the station’s decision was its listings were deleted from some area newspapers’ TV schedules.

With the nation’s transition to digital television now complete, the listings for WEIU will be returned to Champaign-area newspapers, and now WEIU has four places on the Comcast dial: WEIU-TV on channels 14 and 189 for its primary signal, WEIU World on Channel 418, and WEIU-HD on Channel 915.

Some cable subscribers have been unimpressed with the dwindling number of analog signals Comcast is carrying, particularly in smaller communities, forcing them to pay additional fees for converter equipment for their analog cable-ready TV sets.