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Defending the Rights of Mediacom Customers

At Mediacom, we're fighting against rising television programming costs and unfair bundling practices on behalf of our customers. This website is a resource to keep you informed of developments with these issues, and to help you learn how we're working to provide a great programming lineup at a reasonable price.

Important Information About Your TV Channels

December 16, 2020

Dear Mediacom Customer, Each year, Mediacom routinely works to renew many of the agreements we…

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TV tussle: DirecTV, Tegna dispute turns TV channels dark in 51 markets including Houston, Seattle

December 8, 2020

Customers across much of the U.S. have lost TV stations thank to a dispute between…

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Dish Now Missing 236 Channels Due to Fee Fights

December 8, 2020

Dish is now without at least 236 channels due to eight different carriage battles that…

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Your Channel Lineup

Mediacom continually strives to provide channel lineups that offer a great variety at an affordable price.

Like satellite, telcos and other cable providers, Mediacom pays broadcast stations and program networks a monthly fee to bring you their channels. These fees are the fastest rising costs of your monthly cable bill.

Sometimes, these video suppliers charge unfair and unreasonable fees and make demands that we carry their less-popular channels in order to continue to offer their highly-rated networks, and if we do not meet their terms, they black out their channel.

Channel Blackouts

A blackout is an increasingly common negotiating tactic that channel owners use to force cable and satellite companies to pay exorbitant rate increases during contract renewals. Only the network or broadcaster can black out the channel.

This problem of blacking out channels extends far beyond just Mediacom, and many cable and satellite companies regularly find themselves threatened with similar shutdowns. In 2018 there were more than 800 blackouts from broadcast networks that pulled their channels during negotiations.

 

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Channel Bundling

Some big media companies that own multiple networks force us to bundle their least popular channels in order to carry their most popular networks. Others will not allow us to offer their channels on certain tiers. It all amounts to you paying for channels you don’t want to watch.

 

 

The Story of Cable

See why Mediacom has to charge for broadcast channels that are free with an antenna over the air.

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