Consumer Confidential: Spectrum is planning a 20 percent fee hike for local channels as pay-TV customers dwindle

LOS ANGELES - We're so accustomed to having our cable bills routinely go up by absurd amounts, it hardly seems like news when a cable company inflicts more pain on customers.

So perhaps Spectrum subscribers won't be surprised to learn that the monthly fee they pay for access to local channels will rise March 1 to $11.99 from $9.95 - a more than 20 percent increase.

The rate hike comes just a few months after the last increase in the fee, in November, when it climbed 12 percent from $8.85 a month.

But where Spectrum really shows its cunning is in the way it's