Cable operators charging broadcast TV fees

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- If you haven't taken a look at your cable TV bill lately, you should. Time Warner has recently added a charge to most bills called a rebroadcast fee that's $2.25 a week.

The fee is paying for your local TV stations that have always been available for free.

"I think they'll try to do whatever they think they can get away with," Macia Schorr said.

Time Warner says it's a way to educate its subscribers about the rising costs of the retransmission they pay for local TV programming.

Time Warner is not the only cable operator tacking on fees to your cable TV bills. Comcast, AT&T and Charter are already doing this, but Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog says it's just another way to jack up our bills.

"I think this is really a bait-and-switch, because when you sign up for cable, you are paying one price for a package and suddenly you start to see a rebroadcast fee for a channel you already thought you were paying for," Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court said.

Along with the new charges, consumers might see rates go up because of mergers in the works between companies like AT&T and Direct TV.

It's possible that one day we'll all go to a la carte pricing, which means you only pay for the channels you want to watch, but that's all well and good as long as the pricing is reasonable.

"Right now, I think I have the 200 channel package and I don't use all 200, I just want some of the channels that aren't including in the smaller package," Time Warner Cable customer Jenna Kehrli said.

If you think your bill is getting out of hand, contact your local congressperson and let them know.