Time Warner Cable subscribers, brace for rate hikes

[Commentary] Just as Time Warner Cable has cut a deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers for a new baseball channel, which could add $5 to customers' bills regardless of whether they watch the channel, the company is jacking up rates for nearly all its other TV services.

The latest rate hikes also come amid ongoing losses in the number of TV subscribers — as opposed to, say, high-speed Internet customers — throughout the cable industry. Cable companies are thus squeezing more money from fewer TV viewers. "These are outrageous increases," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group. "Cable and satellite companies get away with raising rates because they know that customers have nowhere else to turn." But that could change. At some point, possibly soon, the cable and the satellite industries will go a rate hike too far, prompting even more customers to pull the plug and turn instead to online services such as Netflix.