Comments on: KMOV and Charter Communications

By: The Moderator

The Moderator — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:36:09 +0000

Schnick: Of course Charter places its own ads on KMOV. At least they do out here in St. Charles county. Call Charter Media ( I did a couple of times, trying to find out their policy on channel ad placement ) and they will tell you that depending on the package purchased, you can run your commercials on the local affiliates without having to pay the station directly. I always thought that was a little hinky, myself.

I’m dropping $57.00/month for channels 1-99 and a digital converter so I can watch the local government access channel, C-Span, C-Span 2, and a couple of the expanded basic package channels that went “digital only”. It’s a racket and Charter knows it, but I need my Ninja Warrior.

Oh, and Jefferson City really helped out a lot when it eliminated local licensing requirements for service providers. Yeah, thanks Jefferson City! Thanks to them I get to pay an additional $5.00 a month for that little set-top box just so I can pick up those “Digital Only” channels. The hitch? With that box, my signal has gotten WORSE because of the digital signal compression, and now I have to have an A-B switch to record one program and watch another. Thanks Charter!

Maybe I should really look into Dish Network instead of just threatening Charter with it.

By: schnick

schnick — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:26:33 +0000

It’s just corporate greed. KMOV should be ashamed of themselves. I would not like to mis the Super Bowl Game, or March Madness. KMOV is asking for 1.6 million dollars a year from charter for free TV. Not sure if charter has all the commerial rights or if they air all KMOV comericals. Does anyone know?

By: Kathy G

Kathy G — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:54:29 +0000

Thanks for laying the whole issue out in such a clear manner. I vaguely heard about this in the past few days, but since I’m not a Charter customer I didn’t pay much attention.

By: shep

shep — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:37:33 +0000

Whether or not Charter provides a crappy service isn’t the point here. Believe me, I know they are crap, I’ve written about them in the past.

The point is that KMOV is NOT a cable network so no one should have to pay for programming. What KMOV is saying is that they want more money. Advertising and paid programming are no longer enough for them. They want to start charging people to watch programming that should be freely available. The government gave the airwaves to the networks (instead of keeping it for the people) and the networks make billions of dollars each year off ad-supported programming.

Do you have records that show that Charter pays for other local stations in St. Louis? I’ve yet to find any documentation that states that. The point is that no one, satellite, u-verse, cable, should not have to pay for local affiliate programming.

Also, Bob, if you’d like to comment further, please use a real email address because your comment was caught in the spam filter and I just happened to catch it in time.

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:27:14 +0000

I disagree 100%. For one charter is one of the worst cable distributers in this country. Traveling with the military I have lived in many states and use many service providers and rank Charter at the bottom.

It would be a different story if Charter didn’t roll in a service charge to the customer so they can provide local channels, bu they do. Basically Charter is saying “We are going to charge the people for service, but we want to keep all of the profit, not share it with the people actually supplying the product.”

Funny that Charter pays other local stations here in STL and elswhere to utilize their services, but refuses to pay KMOV.

Personnaly I hope Charter continues to refuse KMOV’s offers and then does the same with other networks. The best thing that could happen here in STL would be for Charter to shoot themself in the foot and be pushed out by all of the other mopre quality providers in the area.