Cable companies and broadcasters are facing off all around the United States marking a significant change in the tenor and nature of cable-broadcast negotiations. Fox, owned by News Corp. and Time Warner Cable squared off over Fox’s demand for a $1 per cable customer. Time Warner asked its’ customers whether to "get tough" or "roll over" in negotiating with Fox. The negotiations gained the attention of Sen. John Kerry because he knew this would affect a lot of people in his home state of Massachusetts. Sen. Kerry raised concerns about the effectiveness of the 1992 Cable Bill that allows broadcasters to negotiate their retransmission agreements with cable companies.

"Congress should examine the abuse of retransmission agreement negotiations that broadcasters are using to force cable companies to pay excessive amounts of money. This amounts to nothing more than a tax on cable customers and it is just not fair. It’s not fair to cable customers because almost all of these cable customers would be able to receive these stations free of charge by installing an antenna at their home. As far back as the 1950’s, Congress granted these broadcasters a very lucrative piece of radio frequency spectrum to provide basic news and information to the public in their demographic market area (DMA). But, as large media companies have bought up TV stations, they become hungry for money which ultimately will come from consumers. Enough is enough.

Jimmy Sandlin said "We want to continue carriage of WAFF-48 Huntsville and we are glad that these negotiations have concluded favorably. If we had not been able to come to an agreement, WAFF-48 Huntsville could have forced Scottsboro EPB to remove its channels from the Scottsboro EPB Cable System. WAFF-48 Huntsville is shown on Scottsboro EPB Cable Channel 11 and Channel 748.

"Our customers are the reason we exist, the reason we provide the level of service we provide, and the reason our rates are well below the national average for Basic Cable TV." Sandlin added.

Scottsboro EPB Cable System serves about 85% of the local Scottsboro Cable market providing Cable TV, Digital Cable, Internet, and local Telephone service to approximately 5,600 customers. Since the launch of Scottsboro EPB Cable System in 1998, Scottsboro customers have saved over $12.4 Million. SEPB brought high-speed Internet to Scottsboro ahead of Huntsville, Birmingham, and Mobile. And since September 2008, SEPB has been providing local and long distance telephone service with it’s wholesale partner Knology of West Point, GA.