Spencer Municipal Utilities (SMU) has been working to renegotiate with several broadcast channels in the SMU cable lineup and the process has come to an end for nearly all networks. As a result, the following channels will be removed from the SMU lineup on Wednesday, December 31st at 11:59pm: KELO (channels 11, 11.11, 11.12, 90, 211) and WHO (channels 20.2, 94, 82.3, 213, 82.4 and 95, 82.5 and 88). We currently have a two week extension for KSFY (channels 10, 13.1, 13.2, and 210) until that negotiation is complete.
We decided not to continue carrying duplicate networks at an additional cost for KELO and WHO.
“Since 2009, SMU has been paying to bring most of the broadcast channels to customers in Spencer. There is a misconception that we get many of the broadcast channels for free and should be able to pass them along to customers that way. SMU has been doing what we can to keep cable costs affordable for customers and we negotiated the best deals we could,” says Amanda Gloyd, marketing and community relations manager at SMU.
Customers will still be able to continue receiving the CBS and NBC programming they are familiar with the channel offerings out of Sioux City.
Rates were also negotiated as part of the process and our board will be taking those into consideration as they look at making rate changes for customers sometime in the New Year. With these changes, the programming costs will increase just over 200% which is half of what it was when we started the negotiation process earlier this year.
“As SMU continues to see increases, we’ll continue to keep costs as affordable as we can for customers,” adds Gloyd.
Spencer Municipal Utilities is a leading provider of cable, internet, telephone and iWireless cellular service in the Spencer community and has been providing water since 1886 and electric services since 1901.
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