Charter Communications announces new cable lineup

The St. Louis-based cable giant said Friday that beginning Tuesday customers throughout the Rogue Valley will see a dramatically revamped lineup on their televisions. They're also hiking the rate for basic cable service, but customers who subscribe to the expanded basic package will see no net increase.

While local over-the-air broadcast channel positions remain the same, virtually every cable channel will have a new location as the cable provider begins grouping networks by genre. That means sports channels, new channels and general entertainment networks will be grouped.

Fox Sports Northwest, ESPN, ESPN2, Outdoor Life, the Golf Channel and Speed Channel will occupy channels 23 through 28.

Northwest Cable News, the Weather Channel, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC and Court TV will take up channels 57 through 63.

Charter mailed customers a new channel lineup card and information about the changes.

Genre grouping is common across the country, said Charter's area manager Mike O'Herron in a statement. "Once customers get accustomed to it, cable companies have found higher levels of satisfaction."

Another big change will be the introduction of a 16-channel Latino tier for Spanish speakers.

The Hispanic population accounts for nearly 20 percent of the Rogue Valley population. Recent Pew Hispanic Research Center findings show that Latino purchasing power has surpassed $9 billion in the Northwest, where the Spanish-speaking population grew 144 percent in the 1990s.

"You can imagine what that one statistic like means to Nike, Pepsi and Cingular," says Ike Apodaca, managing partner of Donde Marketing and Public Relations in Medford. "I suspect that's one of the driving forces behind Charter's recent move."

Although DirecTV has been far more aggressive in courting the Latino television viewer over the past three or four years, Charter is positioning itself to pick up market share. "I see it as an effort to remain competitive with regard to a rapidly expanding, untapped market," Apodaca said.

Charter said it is raising basic cable rates to $19.99 and simultaneously lower the price of expanded basic service for Medford residents. The combined price remains unchanged at $47.99 per month, so the increase will only affect basic cable subscribers.

Charter will soon carry the high definition version of Medford broadcaster KOBI-TV on digital channel 785. This will bring the total number of Charter's HD channels to 15.