Cable Bills Are Rising Again (Those of You Who Still Have Cable)

While facing a growing number of consumers who drop pay-TV for cheaper online alternatives, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Dish Network and AT&T are all planning to increase their prices early 2016 -- at the risk of turning off more subscribers fed up with the rising cost of television. It’s part of the vicious circle at the heart of the US media industry’s current troubles. To attract viewers who are migrating to Netflix and Amazon, programmers are spending billions of dollars on developing scripted shows and on the rights to air sporting events -- one of the last things that people still watch live. They are passing on those costs to cable- and satellite-TV providers by charging higher fees to carry their channels. Those providers, in turn, are passing on some of those costs to consumers.