What’s going on with campus cable?”
These are questions constantly being asked by students and members of the surrounding areas like Ruston, Monroe and Farmerville about the removal of popular channels.
The cable company Suddenlink is no longer receiving popular channels like VH1, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV.
Suddenlink claims Viacom wanted more money for the channel networks it provided, but Suddenlink refused to pay. “Viacom demanded a significant increase in payments,” Suddenlink said in an online statement, “even though viewership has decreased in the last several years for its main channels, some by almost 30%.”
Not so, refutes Viacom, claiming a last-minute deal could have been reached and saying the cost was negligible and would have added only about 20 cents a month to Suddenlink subscribers’ bills.
Different claims not withstanding, the result is that many popular channels have been removed from Suddenlink’s lineup.
Some of the added channels are FXX, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, OWN, Pivot, Sprout, TheBlaze, Up! and Investigation Discovery.
Many residents in sur- rounding areas are changing cable companies, especially those with children because of the replacement of Nickelodeon, which is a popular channel among kids.
Craig Jones, GSU’s director of Network Services, noted the surrounding areas were affected and those customers had no forewarning.
“The company sent out letters on such short notice.”
Not all students have been
affected by the loss of channels. Grambling’s main campus is under a different cable network, so students residing on the main campus have not experienced any problems.
“I actually still have BET, VH1 and MTV,” said Chemei- ka Edwards, a criminal justice major. “As long as I have Disney I’m good.”
But students on West Campus are definitely impacted by the loss. West Campus resident Manasha Vick, a kinesiology major, is not pleased about the changes.
“The channels that they took away were basic channels and were a part of our tuition.
“I don’t even enjoy any of the new channels except OWN,” she said.