BCT Statement Regarding FOX Corporation Negotiations

Posted by Conner Williams | Dec 30, 2019
#tv #announcements
BCT Statement Regarding FOX Corporation Negotiations

BCT, along with over 700 rural cable television providers nationwide, are working with the National Cable Television Collaborative in negotiations with FOX Corporation to renew our agreement to continue to offer FOX News Channel 30/360 or 45, FOX Business Channel 50 or 109, Fox Sports 1 (FS1) Channel 131/631 or 38, and Fox Sports 2 (FS2) Channel 39 (on EZVideo only) to our membership. 

 

Please note: this does not affect the local FOX KPTV Channel 12 or FOX 12 Plus Channel 13.  

 

As your local TV provider, we at BCT believe you deserve access to these channels and work hard to keep TV prices as low as possible for our members. But there’s no denying that programming itself is expensive and rises every year. Those costs are set by multibillion-dollar TV networks like FOX Corporation, which is currently holding hundreds of small, independent cooperatives like BCT hostage over significant rate increases that would be passed on to subscribers. While we understand that the cost of business can escalate over time, it is our policy to reject vastly increased retransmission fees for our members. 

 

We work diligently to keep these prices as low as possible while offering our TV subscribers a wide array of programming choices. This becomes more difficult when popular media companies like FOX Corporation demand price increases that are ten times the rate of inflation. Their goal is to leverage the popularity of their family of channels listed above to raise costs for their programming at an unreasonable rate that would directly impact monthly bills. 

 

We have been working in good faith to reach a mutual agreement that would allow us to keep the FOX family of cable channels and minimize member affecting increases. However, if an agreement is not reached by midnight on Tuesday, December 31, FOX Corporation may remove these channels from your TV lineup as a bargaining chip until negotiations are complete.  

 

Please understand that discontinuing any of these channels temporarily or permanently is not our wish and will only occur as a last resort should all other negotiations fail. If this should happen, know that we will continue to work toward an amicable solution for our members to reinstate the channels as quickly as possible at the best available rate.  

We encourage our members to continue the conversation and to learn more at www.TVOnMySide.com/BCT



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