Cable, satellite bills to get cheaper in September after CRTC ruling

Thanks to a ruling today by the CRTC, your cable and satellite bills will be a little bit cheaper starting this fall.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced on July 18 that they will be doing away with the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) fee, The Globe and Mail reports. The change will be a gradual one, reducing slowly from September 2012 until it disappears altogether by August 31, 2013.

Now before you get all excited about having a cheaper cable bill, the LPIF only takes a very small portion from your monthly bill. To give you an idea, on my $79 cable bill last month, I only paid an additional $1.17 towards the LPIF.

Still, a penny saved is a penny earned, right? And all those pennies add up over the course of the year — especially for those who were benefiting from the fund.

Last year, 80 stations received $106 million in funding from the LPIF. The fund was designed to help smaller local stations make the adjustment to digital television and support local news efforts outside of urban centres.

A news release from the CRTC says that the transition to digital, which has been happening since 2008, has been successful, and they are now confident that the stations benefiting from the fund will be able to stand on their own.

When the fund was first started in 2008, cable and satellite companies were told they needed to contribute to the $100 million fund in order to "ensure television stations had the resources to meet Canadians' needs for local programming," CRTC hearing panel chair Leonard Katz said Wednesday in a CBC story. Companies opted to have Canadians help finance their own local programming needs, and passed the charge on to them.

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