TWC's ‘Maine Event’

Time Warner Cable has chosen Maine as the starting point in its move to go all digital countrywide. The migration away from analog will happen in two parts, with the first set of channels cutting over to digital-only in late October and the second set in November.

News sources in Maine say the cable company is targeting the 90,000 customers it has in its Augusta market, who represent about a quarter of Time Warner’s base in the state.

According to a company spokesman, TWC no longer will offer analog signals to its cable customers in Augusta. If this works, it will tackle the rest of the state and then the rest of the country. Augusta customers who take TWC’s Classic or Basic packages will need a small adapter that translates the signal from digital to analog.  There’s no charge for the adapters until January 2014, when a 99-cent per month fee will be charged for each device.

Those who currently are all-digital subscribers won’t need to do anything else, except to buy additional set-top boxes or adapters.

As a result of this switchover, Basic and Classic subscribers will get some new programming. Basic customers will get CSPAN 2, EWTN, Knox TV, All News Channel, WGME’s The Cool TV, News 8 Now, NBC Weather Plus, MPBN, MPBN2, CREATE, PBS World, RT TV, Shop Zeal 1-5 and ONTWC. Classic subscribers already get those channels, but they will add the CMT, TruTV, Oxygen, Travel and Speed.