Spencer Municipal Utilities (SMU) cable customers could see several channels go dark over the next few days.
Spencer Municipal Utilities is a member of the NCTC, which is a national, not-for-profit cable TV cooperative that negotiates programming fees for 1,000 cable companies across the United States. NCTC is negotiating the MTV Networks contract and has informed SMU that MTV Networks may elect to remove their networks from the cable companies NCTC represents until the negotiations conclude.
“The fact that hundreds of other NCTC members face the same loss of carriage emphasizes that this is not a local problem, but a problem that may affect cable customers across the United States,” says Amanda Paulsen, sales and marketing coordinator at SMU.
For SMU customers, the networks carried under the NCTC contract in Expanded Basic are MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Spike TV, TV Land, CMT, and Comedy Central. SMU also carries the following MTV Network channels in Digital Basic: Nick Jr., NickToons, TeenNick, MTV2, MTV Hits, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, and CMT Pure Country. One network, MTVTr3s, is included in the Digital en Español package.
“We are confident an agreement will be met in the near future, and expect the channels to return to the lineup when negotiations are concluded,” adds Paulsen.
Spencer Municipal Utilities is a leading provider of cable, Internet, telephone and cellular service through i wireless in the Spencer community and has been providing utility services since 1901.
# # #
