All broadcast stations, including the Charlotte TV stations that air ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX programming, have been authorized by the U.S. Congress to grant or deny permission for a cable television operator to retransmit their signals to its customers.

The owners of the television stations in Comporium’s market area have demanded compensation from Comporium’s customers to acquire this consent. We have negotiated in good faith with all of these stations during the past several months, and in some cases, were successful in reducing the new fees originally proposed by the broadcast stations. If we had not come to an agreement regarding these new charges, the station owners would have required us take their signals off of our system.

In fact, that’s exactly what happened with WIS-TV in Columbia. Fortunately, we were able to come to an agreement with them to continue to air their news broadcasts on Channel 2 at no additional charge.

The local broadcast stations are increasing the cost to provide their signals to you by a total of $1.71 per month, which is effective as of March 1, 2009. This new charge appears on customers’ invoices as “Broadcast Station Fee.”

Comporium makes every effort to continually provide our customers with quality entertainment at reasonable rates.