Whether you’re a casual watcher or someone whose main source of entertainment is television, your local channels are sure to be among the most important ones you receive. You rely on them for local news, weather and sports as well as network specials and highly-popular primetime programming.
You deserve access to your local stations, and you deserve the ability to receive them at a reasonable price. Sometimes, there are factors beyond our control that impact costs. One factor is broadcast TV fees, and Ritter Communications is going to bat for you to keep those fees reasonable.
A decades-old federal law empowers broadcasters to charge fees to local cable providers like Ritter for the rights to carry or “retransmit” their signals. Over the coming weeks, we will be negotiating fees with corporate broadcasters for the rights to carry broadcast signals from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and the CW.
Our goal is to sign deals for the programming you want at reasonable monthly fees and to avoid a situation where corporate broadcasters remove popular programs to play hardball in negotiations. But what used to be an easy business transaction is no longer.
Broadcast TV fees are a growing source of income for corporate broadcasters, and that can create challenges when it comes to these negotiations. The corporate leaders of the broadcast stations are not members of our community, so they are not negatively impacted by the outcomes of these negotiations as we all are.
While it is too early to know how these negotiations will turn out, Ritter Communications wants to make it clear we are focused on making sure our customers can watch local news, enjoy family night in front of the TV and cheer on your favorite teams.
We know you have many choices for TV and video viewing, and we share your desire for the lowest price for quality TV programming. We will continue to keep you informed about these negotiations over the next few weeks.
As part of our “Right by You” pledge, we are committed to providing you with the best service at the lowest possible cost. That’s why we’ll continue to negotiate hard to secure the lowest possible rates and ensure uninterrupted coverage. We've created a website to keep you updated on negotiation status with each station. Click here to see the stations with which we're currently negotiating in your area.
You can visit KeepTheConnections.com to learn more about the retransmission negotiation process. Click here to read Frequently Asked Questions about retransmission concent. Tweet this article to your friends!
