The company serves 40,000 cable television customers in the Pioneer Valley.
Charter Communications Inc. has moved channels around its lineup because of plans to add more high-definition stations later this year.
The changes had no impact on cable-television prices, said Dennis P. Jerome, director of marketing for Charter in New England, by telephone from his office in Worcester. Prices for basic cable vary from municipality to municipality because of state regulations. The lineup changes went into effect Tuesday.
But the price of basic and expanded basic service together adds up to $60.99 a month in all the Massachusetts towns and cities Charter services, Jerome said.
All channels but one, MTV 2, will remain on the same tier of service as before. MTV 2 will move from 74 to 68 and will now be on the digital tier, requiring a converter box but no need for a more expensive level of cable service, Jerome said.
Charter’s plan is to add as many as 10 or 15 high-definition television channels by the end of the year, Jerome said. In most cases, those channels won’t cost customers more because they already receive the regular-definition versions of those channels as part of their regular service.
Other changes were: NECN or New England Cable News from 39 to 77, The Weather Channel from 43 to 39, Spike TV from 70 to 43, CMT, or Country Music Television, from 71 to 64, VH1 from 72 to 65, MTV from 73 to 66 and WDMR , the Spanish-language Telemundo affiliate, has moved from 96 to 95.
Jerome said there were skipped numbers in Charter’s channel lineup. The moves help to fill in those gaps and create vacant channel numbers at the upper end.
But Jerome said some televisions are programmed to skip unused channel numbers as people scroll through the stations. People with cable-ready televisions and no cable box need to use their television’s autotune or autosearch function in order to pick up the stations in their new homes, he said.
Both features are accessible through a television’s menu function. St. Louis-based Charter provides cable television to roughly 40,000 customers in: Westhampton, Southampton, Easthampton, Hadley, Belchertown, Ludlow, Chicopee, Wilbraham, East Longmeadow and Hampden.