Enjoy Paying A Sports Surcharge If You Subscribe To Cable One

By Nathan Young on September 16, 2014

Are you glad to watch the SEC Network? If you live here in Anniston/Oxford, and have Cable One, be glad you can see Alabama and Auburn play each weekend, because you are going to pay more for watching them. Starting this month, Cable One is adding a “Sports Surcharge” to their bills. The surcharge is $2.94, and the fee will help to pay sports-licensing costs that are spiraling out of control and it wants its customers to foot the bill. Despite reports saying cable companies will experience the highest profitability in the media and entertainment industry this year, Cable One customers are going to pay more? Are you happy to watch Alabama or Auburn on TV now?

This is the latest splat on Cable One. This Summer, the company removed all of the Viacom channels including Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, and other networks, permanently. When that happened, anyone on Cable One can not watch any video on any Viacom related website. And there has been no news on Cable One and Viacom coming to an agreement. So because of this, Jacksonville State University kicked out Cable One and brought in a different service. The college students were happy!

http://twitter.com/unspokenafua/status/492413672489095168

With cable costs spiraling out of control, and Cable One taking away more channels, and replacing them with lesser known channels, but keeping the price the same. More and more customers are getting tired of the run around. Cable One said the reason why they are adding the sports surcharge is because “Networks are now paying billions of dollars for the ability to broadcast college and professional sporting events.” Sports, now represents a third of its overall programming costs.

“These increasingly expensive sporting events are carried by networks in every level of our channel lineup, including dedicated sports channels such as ESPN, NBC Sports and the NFL Network, as well as on general entertainment networks such as TNT, TBS, USA Networ,k and your Regional Sports Networks.” Cable One said they held off the higher costs for as long as they could. But one has to wonder if they could pay the extra costs since they are not paying for the Viacom channels anymore? All while more and more customers complain about their service online.

https://twitter.com/eireheather/status/511701973301620736

CEO Dauman on small ops and Cable One dropping Viacom channels: "I don't think it portends much of anything." @Viacom @cableONE

— Amy Maclean (@MACcable) September 10, 2014

Let’s face it, cable TV is going the way of the dinosaur. More and more people are cord cutting and only keeping internet and streaming their shows online. This is why cable companies want to end net neutrality, so they can charge the same outrageous fees to internet customers who are not subscribed to TV. Cable One keeps having carriage disputes and rate increases, the question is this? How long until the folks who lead in Calhoun County dump Cable One for good? JSU has dumped them. Customers are dumping them or moving away so they can be with a different cable company. Are you enjoying the SEC Network on Cable One, enjoy paying extra for it and other sports programming. Calhoun County, do the right thing and kick Cable One out of town!