Most TV service customers are not aware of the fact we are forced to pay the local network stations a fee for every single household we serve. The very same local channels that can be viewed for free with an over the air antenna! The very same local stations that used to be happy to be carried on our system so they could reach customers that are too far away to pick up their signal.

The local TV stations have seen their popularity decrease over the past few years and have lost a lot of their advertising income as a result of their declining number of viewers. Their answer to this is to make you, TV service subscribers, pay for their loss in revenue and it is not fair or right, especially when their channel is currently free to anyone using an antenna.

Over the past several years these local stations have increased their fees from a combined average of $.60 per customer to today’s combined average of $19.84 per customer. Now they are demanding yet another increase which will take the average customer cost to nearly $30 per customer, that’s a $10 increase. Since we have already absorbed as much of these fees as possible our only remaining course of action is to raise our prices by the same amount these fees increase or begin removing channels from our lineup. Since we feel our customers aren’t willing to bear a $10 increase, we have decided to remove WOWK (Ch13) and the WVAH (Ch11) stations from our channel lineup. By dropping these two least watched stations, we’ll be able to reduce our costs enough to nearly offset the entire rate increase of all the other channels and possibly eliminating, or at least greatly reducing, the need to increase our prices.

We regret that such steps are necessary, but we know our customers cannot continue to bear these outrageous programming fees. So, we are taking steps to try to keep our TV service affordable, while at the same time, keeping content that is desirable.

We welcome any questions or comments you may have, please visit our Facebook page to voice your opinion. You are also encouraged to voice your thoughts to the FOX (Channel 11) and WOWK(Channel 13) broadcast stations.