Shentel, which provides cable television service for Farmville, says it will be forced to drop the suite of channels owned by AMC Networks on Dec. 31 unless major changes are made in the proposed contract renewal.

Shentel officials said Monday that AMC’s contract proposal calls for a rate increase, the carriage of additional channels and the relocation of their less popular channels to a most-watched tier – all of which represents a 379 percent cost increase over the term of the contract.

AMC Networks include AMC, IFC, Sundance, WE and BBC World and BBC America. Shentel currently carries AMC, WE and IFC and has a separate contract with BBC that does not expire at this time. Shentel plans to reimburse cable customers the cost of the channels being dropped until new programming can be obtained.

“When a programmer like AMC demands an unprecedented increase in its monthly fees, we believe it’s our responsibility to take a stand.  We know that the AMC channel itself has popular programming, but outside those programs the content is weak. The secondary channels are not popular and adding them to our lineup could impact our ability to enhance broadband capacity,” said Chris Kyle, Shentel vice president of industry relations and regulatory.

“We hold out hope that AMC will modify its proposed contract. There are many other independent cable operators who feel as we do.  If nothing changes, however, those channels will go dark in 2016 on Shentel Cable,” said Kyle.