ELKINS — A cable company’s “here today, gone tomorrow” channel maneuvering surprised many local customers in recent weeks, and was discussed during the most Randolph County Commission meeting held at the Wees Annex.

When the cable company Optimum canceled Nexstar channels on Jan. 10, leading to several local television stations, including WBOY, being dropped from local cable, some customers said they were unaware that they would be losing the channels until they attempted to tune in to one after the switch.

“I woke up Saturday morning and didn’t have several channels that I typically watch every day,” Elkins resident Trina Kisner said. “I had no idea that the cable company was even thinking about removing any channels.”

During the reports section of Thursday’s meeting, Randolph County Commission President David Kesling addressed the situation with Mike Miller, the director of Randolph County 911 and Office of Emergency Management.

Kesling said the Commission has had area residents reaching out to them, asking them about the possibility of bringing another cable company into the county.

“Optimum has taken some of the local channels off and some people are wanting to know if there is another option,” said Kesling. “They want to know if there’s another provider locally who can come in.”

Miller said many people are turning to streaming local television channels online in order to get their local programming and news.

“We went to watch football the other night and we made a phone call to Optimum about the chanels,” Miller said. “They told us they were in negotiations with that company (Nexstar) and that those channels were not currently available.”  

Kesling said people have been asking if there was a restriction on having more than one provider in the area. 

“Is there anything in the county where it says we can only have one television cable provider in the county?” Kesling asked Miller.

“I worked for the cable company out of high school and I don’t know of any restrictions,” Miller replied. “I think the reason we only have one is because there has just not been any other companies around who wanted to come in here and compete with what we have.”

“I know the Commission checked years ago to see if Time Warner and a couple other providers wanted to come into the area,” said Commissioner Chris See. “At that time none of them seemed interested.”

Kesling told The Inter-Mountain he would be open to having more than one cable provider in Randolph County.

“Competition is good. I myself have had problems with Optimum with service, equipment failure or whatever,” he said. “As of right now, no other providers have contacted us about wanting to be here, but we can always look into it and see what is out there.”

Kesling said one of the issues he had with Optimum removing the local channels so quickly, is that many people, especially the elderly, don’t use the internet and turn to their local TV stations for weather updates and other alerts.

“A lot of people who don’t have internet typically tune in to the local stations to see if a storm is coming, or if it’s going to be really cold,” said Kesling. “I’m sure many people were upset they couldn’t get that type of information last weekend.”

Miller told The Inter-Mountain Friday that removing some of the local channels could leave some people in the dark, information-wise.

“Most people, especially the elderly people in the area, have that smaller package and they use those local channels as resources for information,” said Miller. “Some of them could definitely miss out on some alerts by not having those local channels.”

There are currently no laws in West Virginia that limit the number of cable providers in a county. West Virginia law states that cable franchises are nonexclusive. This means that multiple cable providers can operate in the same area.