BCT is currently in negotiations with AMC Networks to renew our agreement to continue to offer AMC, BBC America, WE tv, and IFC to our membership. 

As your local TV provider, BCT believes you deserve access to these channels, and we 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 corporations like AMC Networks, 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 on behalf of 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 AMC Networks demand price increases that are eight 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. When, in reality, AMC viewership has declined by half in the last 4 years and their signature show, The Walking Dead, is in its final season.  

We have been working in good faith to reach a mutual agreement that would allow us to keep the AMC family of cable channels and minimize member affecting increases. However, if an agreement is not reached by 11:59PM on Friday, April 30, BCT may be required to remove these channels from your TV lineup 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 visit www.bctelco.com/news for updates.