Mass Confusion: Bright House Channel Changes Start Today

As you may already know by now, tons of channels are changing on Bright House Networks in every one of its Tampa Bay area cable TV systems in seven counties. Pinellas County has been hit the hardest, with 42 different channel changes, including moving the government and public school channels into the high definition tier. It's all in the name of standardizing channel numbers in every market.

There's also a bunch of new high definition channels -- eight debuting tomorrow. Some, including the ESPN channels, have appeared before their scheduled start, but I'll include the information anyways.

The new HD channels in Pinellas (name/new channel number)
Discovery HD / 721     Discovery Science HD / 722    Animal Planet HD / 723                                      The Learning Channel HD / 724       Food Network HD/ 731      HGTV HD / 732
History HD / 734     ESPN HD / 707   ESPN2 HD / 704     National Geographic HD / 727

The channel changes (name/old channel number/new channel number) Click here to see Bright House chart on the changes.

AMC / 22 / 64    BET / 65 / 19     Bravo / 54/ 51    Cartoon / 62 / 58    City Govt. / 15 / 615
County Govt. / 18 / 622      CMT / 58 / 45     CNN / 40 / 29    C-SPAN / 99 / 15
C-SPAN2 / 50, 96 / 24    Discovery / 51 / 34     Discovery Health / 72 / 20    Disney / 68 / 40
E! / 37 / 14         EWTN / 46 / 70     Fox News / 67 / 37     Fox Sports / 69 / 39
FX / 39 / 60       Golf / 32/ 67    Hallmark / 49 / 68     Headline News / 41 / 30
History / 64 / 25    TLC / 34 / 46      Lifetime Movie / 73 / 50    Movie Plex / 66 / 62
MSNBC / 30 / 41     MTV / 44 / 66      National Geographic / 71 / 65   Oxygen / 74 / 44
Pin. Co. Schools 14 / 614     Public Access / 96 / 949     QVC / 29 / 22
SciFi / 60 / 59       Shop NBC / 24 / 98     Spike / 53/ 43      St. Pete College / 19 / 620
TCM / 59 / 53       Telemundo / 76 / 97      Travel / 43 / 54      TV Guide / 98 / 99
TV Land / 75 / 49       USA / 25 / 32    VH1 / 45 / 71    WE / 70 / 69     WGN / 20 / 18
Source: Bright House Networks

I also got this email from the good folks at Verizon:

Our channel line-up for PEGs is already "in order" and will not be changed. The link below provides you with our overall line-up. The PEG channels are available to both analog (Local Package on this list) and digital customers in the same location. The overwhelming majority of our FiOS TV customers take the digital Premier package. One, it is the foundation of our bundled offerings; and two, at $42.99 for standalone (STBs, taxes and fees are extra), it is priced very competitively to Bright House's analog and digital packages.

Click here to see their channel lineup.

Comments

[Doug]

Mass confusion? Let's put this in perspective; I think most people will take this in stride. Last time I checked it was...well...just...TV.

[Sandra]

This is garbage. I am an St. Petersburg College student who frequently registers for TV/TeleWeb classes; now I have to pay Brighthouse just to get some stupid converter to see the SPC channel. I don't buy their excuse at all..."standardizing channels"..yeah, right. Slowly, they will move every channel they can to the triple-digit channels so we are all forced to pay them more if we currently are only interested in basic service.

[Eric Deggans]

Dude...you're reading a blog ABOUT TV.

Does it really surprise you that we take it a little more seriously here?

[Kenneth]

Are they going to charge us extra to access these HD channels like they do ESPN? The HD quality for the network stations is better with rabbit ears.

Switch to Knology. I did and told BH why. I get several hundred digital channels, plus internet for $20 LESS than basic cable + low end internet from BH AND I can still keep an eye on the school board and city gvt.

SWITCH CARRIERS TODAY!

[R]

Crap, now I'll have to subsidize all the lower income people so they can afford cable boxes to get public access channels in HD!

[GlennS.]

With all of the changes and additions, I don't understand why Hillsbrough County Bright House customers still have to deal with C-SPAN2 and E! sharing the same channel. We get C-SPAN2 all day and into the early evening, and then E! all night. This takes place both weekdays and weekends. I notice this isn't the case in Pinellas and Pasco counties. What gives?

[GlennS.]

Oops, my fingers were flying too fast ... That would be Hillsborough County ... I have no idea what they do in Hillsbrough County.

[Scott Schoenherr]

How could subscribers not be prepared for this? There have been SEVERAL articles relating to this in both big newspapers locally, ads published with the new channel lineup in both papers, inserts in all cable bills with the new channel lineup, as well as ads on Bright House cable notifying of the forthcoming changes Dec 11 and 12th. How could the common "idiot" not figure all this out? This reminds me of the decision to split the area code 813 into 727 in Pinellas instead of the original plan to overlay the two area codes and have 10 digit dialing. The common "idiot" was too stupid to figure out how to remember all those digits in a phone number.

[D]

I would rather stick with Brighthouse then any other cable or telephone company...I had Verizon and their service sucked along with their customer service...at least when I call Brighthouse they are polite and I'm back up the same day...with Verizon I had to wait 2 or 3 days before they could get someone out to fix the problem ...and it doesn't take a genious to figure the channels out...for you stupid people go to Knowlogy or Verizon...

If saving $20/mo *and* getting 3 or 4X the service is stupid, sign me up.

Sounds like D's the dumb one here--too dumb to handle a change. I can hear D whining, "It's so EEEEEEZY to sit here and be ripped off! I'm too dumb figure out saving money and getting better service! Don't confuse me and my dumbness by making sense!"

[D]

Maybe EEEEEEZY should call Brighthouse and see how much more they would be saving...trust me I did my homework on cable and telephone companies...and who are you saving $20.00 a month with...lol...

[Eric Deggans]

And to think someone complained we were taking all this too seriously...

Eric:

My point was that "mass confusion" as related to a TV channel line-up, is the wrong label. For mass confusion, I see those words more closely related to finding out you or a loved one has cancer, or the death of a loved one serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I remain amazed at how most of the public can be upset and at wits end about things like a TV channel change.

[Jim Johnson]

Eric,

Here's a question.

Bright House says they can't split CSPAN2 and E! in Hillsborough County because there are no more channels from 2-99.

Well, according to my channel guide, they have 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 93, and 94 open. 95 is listed as COMM (?), while 96 is GATE ACCESS Channel. It seems to me there is room in the lower - analog - stations for both CSPAN2 an E!.

What am I missing?

[Phil]

Don't you just love the way they sandwich in the QVC's and HSN's and Religious channels between the movie networks and the music stations and the sports networks trying to get us to watch these annoying stations? Sorry, I am not buying anything on QVC, or EWTN for that manner!

[GlennS.]

Or how about the way they've stuck a bunch of PPV channels between the regular cable lineup and the digital channels. Don't these people know they're interfering with the national pastime of channel hopping? Seriously, it is annoying.

[Eric Deggans]

That's why God invented the Favorites button, gentlemen....