By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
The Glasgow Electric Plant Board is raising rates on its cable-related services effective Nov. 1 in an effort to lessen the financial loss the company is suffering from cable customers.
“It’s a significant increase,” Aaron Russell, communications director at EPB, said. “One we are dreading having to do.”
On Aug. 27, the directors of the plant board unanimously voted to approve the rate increase due to “increased programming costs forced on the GEPB by cable channel providers.” Russell said, in addition to the increasing programming costs, which is the cost the EPB pays channel providers so it can offer the channel to its customers, the rate increase is an effort to bring cable prices closer to net zero.
“This [increase] has been a 3-year process to get pricing where our leadership feels it always should have been,” Russell said. “For over a decade we sold cable at a pretty staggering loss; a loss per customer that was pretty substantial…so this has been a 3-year process to start recovering that loss.”
“On the balance sheet we are still losing money in terms of cable only but this is the final step to recovering our programming costs and being in a better financial position,” Russell added.
Russell said most subsequent increases would be done in response to increasing programming costs and said that was the reason the EPB was recommending to its customers to drop their cable services and switch to internet only and streaming services, calling it the “next evolution of cable TV.”
“Programming costs are still the number one contributor [to increases] and ultimately it’s what’s going to lead us out of the service,” Russell said. “It’s not long-term feasible…ultimately we are being priced out of [cable] service. The chairs are being removed from the table [but] we’ll be offering internet services until people stop buying it.”
“Drop cable, go internet only [and] get a streaming service,” Russell added.
Russell said the EPB can provide guidance for its customers who might be wary of making the switch.
While cable only and cable bundle are seeing an increase — sometimes an increase of $20 — internet services are seeing a $5 decrease. Russell said EPB customers will see the new rates on their December bills.
Russell also said something new that will become effective Nov. 1 is the combining of the premium and the premium HD bundles into the Elite bundle to “help customers offset the rising cost of cable TV.”
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