For years we’ve talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills — a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate — then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then falsely claim they haven’t raised rates.
A 2019 Consumer Reports study found that about 24% of consumer bills are comprised of bullshit fees, generating cable giants $28 billion in additional revenue annually. The problem is just as bad over in broadband (see Centurylink’s utterly nonsensical “Internet Cost Recovery” fee).
Often cable and broadband companies will try to give such fees official sounding names like “regulatory recovery” so that consumers falsely blame government for being nickel-and-dimed. But between TV fees, hardware fees, usage fees, and other surcharges, bundled customers dole out a small fortune every year for absolutely nothing.
It’s fraud and false advertising, but fraud and false advertising that has somehow been normalized over decades in the United States.
One particularly annoying fee is the “broadcast TV fee” cable providers tack onto your bill. It’s basically just a portion of the cost of programming, again broken out and hidden below the line so they can falsely advertise a lower rate. Charter (Spectrum) this week informed customers that the broadcast TV fee on their bills will soon be jumping to $21 a month:
Effective March 18, Spectrum’s “Broadcast TV Fee” will increase by $3. Customers will have to pay $21 per month just to be able to watch their favorite local, over-the-air television stations.
The Broadcast TV Fee has been raised each of the last two summers; most recently, it was increased to $17.99 per month in June 2021. This means that Spectrum’s average surcharge for local, OTA stations is rising an average of $36 per year.
Competition really hasn’t hampered this behavior, in part, because many users still feel like they must subscribe to traditional cable to watch the full array of live sports options that aren’t consistently available on streaming. And again, regulators have generally chosen to turn a blind eye to this practice, much as they have in the airline, hotel, banking, and countless other industries.
The closest we’ve got to meaningful action has been the Biden FCC’s decision to revisit “nutrition labels” for broadband. But that doesn’t apply to television bundles, and while it’s helpful to bring more transparency to precisely how you’re being ripped off, it doesn’t actually stop it from occurring.
