Cable customers in South Valley and San Benito County will soon
have a variety of special interest channels to choose from. Rates
are going up as well. Charter Communications, the nation
’s third-largest cable TV systems operator, will offer the
channels in three themed “tiers” for $5 each: sports, movies and
family programming beginning Sept. 1.
Cable customers in South Valley and San Benito County will soon have a variety of special interest channels to choose from. Rates are going up as well.
Charter Communications, the nation’s third-largest cable TV systems operator, will offer the channels in three themed “tiers” for $5 each: sports, movies and family programming beginning Sept. 1.
“We’re really excited to be providing this option of choice for the consumer,” said Suzanne Berger, director of sales and marketing for the area.
The company originally planned to offer a movie package and added the sports and family tiers due to customer demand, she said. The group of sports channels includes ESPN Classic, ESPN News, The NFL Network, The Outdoor Channel, TVG Horseracing, Fuel, Golf Channel and four Fox Sports Networks.
For movie buffs, the digital movie tier comes with Showtime, The Movie Channel and Encore. The family and informational tier includes The History Channel, Noggin, Discovery Health and Lifetime Movie Network.
“We structured our offerings so the consumer will now be able to choose whatever special interest group they want,” Berger said.
“We hope we’ve hit the nail on the head and that this is going to stay for a while, because this is a great combination of choices,” said Craig Watson, Charter’s vice president of communications.
All Charter customers will see the standard rates for various value packages, ranging from basic to top-of-the-line, increase by $3 per month each. For example, the digital basic and expanded package will cost $48.95.
Charter’s value packages were designed to offer a grouping of extras at a discounted price, Berger said.
“If you take the individual components and you stack them up, the package rates were discounted off the individual ‘a la carte’ rates,” she said.
The $3 monthly increase on value packages will still be a discount over purchasing the items separately, she said.
Customers who already have the HBO and Cinemax packages also will be receiving two new channels this fall – HBO East and Cinemax East – starting in September, at no additional charge. The channels air content three hours earlier.
Charter will rearrange the digital channel line-up, based on content, to make it easier for customers to navigate through programming. For example, news, sports, music and children’s channels will be grouped together so viewers can quickly find the channels they seek.
