The Mayor’s Cable Advisory Committee met on Wednesday and discussed another example of changing times. The meeting was gathered to discuss Spectrum’s switch to digitizing all TVs connected to the cable network. The switch to digital will increase costs for Spectrum cable customers.
Eight committee members were present for the meeting, which served to let everyone vent about and discuss the recent Spectrum changes.
As of September 25, all residential Spectrum cable customers in Owensboro will be forced to add a digital converter box to each of their TV sets. Businesses and schools will have to make the switch as early as September 18. They will also be charged an additional monthly charge for use of Spectrum’s services, and for the boxes.
According to the committee, cable customers in Owensboro and Daviess County have decreased drastically. There are currently 13,000 Daviess County residents that use Spectrum for their cable services, compared to 28,000 only a few years before.
Owensboro City Attorney Steve Lynn said Spectrum would no longer be donating $30,000 a year to the city of Owensboro, something they’d done in previous years. After trying to convince Spectrum to donate, rather than have to raise tax dollars, Spectrum said no.
Now, each public school, library, county school, city and county building will receive a new system. Mike Peacock, a representative from Owensboro Public Schools, said Spectrum isn’t playing a fair game with customers.
“They’ve encrypted their signal and without a box, you don’t get anything, and that’s wrong,” said Peacock. “If you want to run a TV in your house, you have to pay for it.”
The board discussed the “death” of cable television, adding that most under the age of 30 don’t even have cable services. “Viewership isn’t what is used to be,” said Lynn.
Peacock and his OPS colleague, Norman Hill, said Spectrum’s mindset is, one, they’re going to charge whatever they want, and two, they just don’t care.
“You’re going to pay us X amount of dollars for our service, and you’re going to pay for the box,” said Hill of Spectrum’s switch to digital. “We’ll put a piece of equipment with your TV that you rent from us.”
In all, Peacock and Hill said they’d be paying $700 a month for digital services. The service to use Spectrum’s site costs an additional $78 a month, while each digital converter box costs an extra $8 per TV.
Peacock and Hill said they’ve opted out of making the digital switch with Spectrum.
Owensboro Catholic High School’s David Ralph said their schools have switched from cable to “over the air” because of high costs associated with the digital switch.
“We can’t afford it,” said Ralph of OCHS. “We’re going to use an antenna for each site.”
College students at Brescia aren’t making the switch either. According to the board, students have switched over to Hulu and Netflix to utilize their streaming services.
Concerns about the Daviess County Detention Center were also raised. Each cell has a TV, all of which formerly used cable. Now, the board isn’t sure whether DCDC will make the switch to digital, paying the higher costs per individual TV.
At the Cable Advisory Board meeting, not a single attendee said they’d retained their Spectrum cable services.
Another member said that, in five years, the board would look back on their Sept. 5th meeting and laugh, because cable wouldn’t exist anymore. YouTube, Facebook, Hulu, and Netflix are proving to cost less and appeal to viewers more than cable, even if that means losing local weather and education channels.
“In this day and age of information being out there, things are disappearing,” said Lynn. “This is one of them.”
