The Glasgow Electric Plant Board is dropping WNKY-TV NBC and CBS from its lineup because of a 1,000 percent increase in cost.

“NKY asked for such huge increases,” said William Ray, superintendent of the Glasgow EPB. “We’re paying less than 1/10th of what they’re asking for for the next three years.”

Because of a confidentiality clause, Ray declined to reveal how much the EPB, which oversees Glasgow’s electric, Internet and cable television services, has been paying for access to WKNY the past three years.

“The FCC dictates that every three years the broadcasters get to decide whether they are going to force us to carry their signal or they can elect to make it optional and we can carry them if we pay what they demand to be paid,” he said. “The last time we went through this was 2011. Every October, November and December we’re trying to negotiate. The 2014 (negotiation) sets up the relationships for 2015, 2016 and 2017.”

The EPB will pick up WCZU, an independent station out of Bowling Green and WKYU-PBS, which doesn’t charge to broadcast. It is in negotiations with WBKO-TV, which has ABC and CW networks.

“We hope to have negotiations done in the next few days,” Ray said.

“Nashville and Louisville is where the rest of the stations come from. We’ve already made some deals with them, and some of them we are dropping. We go through the same negotiations process.”

Customers will see an increase in the cable portion of their bill, Ray said, but not as much as it would have been if they had kept the less affordable stations, some of which were asking for increases from 175 percent to more than 1,000 percent.

“We’ll increase (costs) for $5 a month beginning Jan. 1 for channels we’re going to keep and that’s by getting rid of the ones we think are not affordable,” he said. “Some of those we’ve been able to negotiate an affordable fee.”

Calls to WKNY were not returned as of press time.

— Follow reporter Alyssa Harvey on Twitter at twitter.com/bgdnfeatures or visit bgdailynews.com.