This week Time Warner Cable announced a major shakeup to their channel lineup. By automatically selecting the picture mode and reestablishing channel groups, channels should be easier to navigate. The rearrangement also gives more space for TWC’s higher margin channels, movies and On Demand. The changes take place on March 11, 2014.

Channels 1-99 will stay the same, however nearly every channel above 100 will have a new assignment according to the following groups:

• Entertainment, Life, and Style (100s)
• News & Information (Lower 200s)
• Kids & Teens (Upper 200s)
• Music (Upper Upper 200s)
• Sports (300s)
• Movies & Premiums (500s, 600s)
• Sport Packages (700s)
• Latino (800s)
• On Demand (1000s)
• Local Programming (1200s)
• International (1400s)
• Adult (1800s)
• Radio (1900s)
• TWC Info (1998)

Because high-definition is the new norm, it appears that the SD version of channels with an HD signal are being dropped. This means that there will no longer be a “+1000” HD counterpart for each lower channel. ESPN HD will be 300, and there just won’t be an ESPN SD. This should make navigating easier…until UHD (“4K”)  content is offered.

It is an excellent improvement that one can access HD channels with only a 3-digit number. However the most popular channels, CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox, are in disarray in the far reaches of the 1200s , requiring 4-digits. WRAL, “channel 5”, moves from 1105 to…1209. WTVD, “channel 11”, moves to…1200. How is that an improvement? These new assignments neither follow the patterns of long-held Over the Air channel assignments nor TWC’s arbitrary single digit assignments. These are the customers’  favorite channels, and they should be offered in more intuitive positions. THEY should occupy the 100 tier, while everything else should be pushed up 100 channels. Sport packages, a very light seller, should be in the 1400s (1000 higher than the 400s, where other sports should be), and Internationals should share the 900s with Latino.

There is still no word, thankfully, about any changes to the Clear QAM channels. Last March the FCC removed the requirement that cable companies offer content that can be obtained freely over the air (with an antenna) with no equipment restrictions. In other words until the FCC’s ruling last year, TWC was required to offer WRAL on 5.1 so that your HDTV could scan and tune this channel without a cable box. Now there is no law forbidding TWC from requiring a box for any channel. (eventually the system will have to drop their analog channels, thus requiring a set top box for every TV – no 1-99 in other words).

There is no need to obtain new equipment for the new channel lineups. Cable boxes will cough, sputter, and reboot magically on 3/11 and load the new channel assignments. For those of us with CableCard equipment (Windows Media Center, TiVo), however, we will have to run a rescan manually to download the new assignments.

Download a PDF of the new lineups, by channel .