Time Warner Cable To Pull Viacom's MTV, VH1, Nick & Comedy Central Off (Averted)

[dfergie]

UNHAPPY NEW YEAR! Time Warner Cable To Lose Viacom's MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon & Comedy Central In NY, LA, Everywhere

What an awful way to ring in 2009. It turns out that Viacom claims it has been trying to negotiate a "fair" renewal of its prized cable channels for months and months, but reputedly Time Warner Cable has been unresponsive and "unreasonable". The nation's 2nd largest cable system operator, in turn, claims Viacom is asking for "exorbitant" increases in carriage fees which would have to be passed along to the customer. So now this fight between the two Big Media giants will hurt cable viewers. At 12:01 AM on January 1st, just after the ball drops in Time Square, Time Warner Cable's 13 million subscribers will lose 19 Viacom channels.

Source & More: deadlinehollywooddaily.com

(spotted this in fredfa's HOTP Thread at AVSForum)

 

[richiephx]

The bigger question is....how many of those 13 million subscribers would really care? I for one wouldn't. It's about time providers start playing hardball with the programmers. Times are tough right now. When does it end. They keep upping the fees but yet they keep decreasing actual programming and adding more and more commercials and screen clutter that detracts from programming. I say good for TWC.

 

[dfergie]

More takes on this at the NYTimes & Bloomberg
(about the same info as first post)

 

[jself1982]

The way I see it, they should rename MTV to The Reality Show Repeat Channel, MTV2 should be renamed to Cribs TV, TVLand should be renamed to The Not So Old Channel, VH1 should be named The Reality Network 2...CMT should be the Anything But Country channel.

Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Spike, Logo is about the only 4 channels that has some content on it relative to the channel name.

I wouldn't miss anything but CMT for the 2 or 3 hours of videos.

The content Viacom produces now is horrible. Where is the music? Where is the relative programming. Great American Country shows more than CMT ever has. TV Land is now starting to show newer shows like Scrubs, and Extreme Home Makeover, how is this qualifications of Nick at Nite? All of their channels show the same stuff, they need to change their programming content before asking for higher rates from providers.

 

[No_Brains]

so E* isnt the only ones that has these problems are they!
though its a shock for E* because if it had been E* i would have cancled

 

[No_Brains]

i dont like CMT either..
if i'm watching CMT it would be for the videos...
but not for the stupid crap they show.
that channel is a piece of junk now

 

[jhart712]

I just wish the would quit running the message across the bottom of the screen on Dish.

John

 

[capman]

Uh, didn't us dish customers go through the same thing awhile back?

 

[JohnH]

I just wish the would quit running the message across the bottom of the screen on Dish.

John

The message is on the channels from the source and shows up on Comcast Cable, DIRECTV and DiSH Network as well as Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

BTW: Bright House Networks subscribers may lose the programming as well as Time Warner Cable subscribers.

 

[kb7oeb]

I looked over the list and as an HD absolute customer I don't get any viacom channels other than palladia.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

I was with E* when the dispute took place in 2004. Back then it also took out Locals. Our CBS Affiliated is was owned by Viacom then. Other than Spike and Nick who cares if they go off the air.

 

[dlsnyder]

You can count on the same thing happening with Dish in the near future. TWC has been known to play hardball with programmers in the past. I seem to recall the ABC o&o stations being turned off by TWC a few years ago and the big uproar that caused.

 

[skottey]

The message is on the channels from the source and shows up on Comcast Cable, DIRECTV and DiSH Network as well as Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

BTW: Bright House Networks subscribers may lose the programming as well as Time Warner Cable subscribers.

I see the ALERT message on the channels on both DirecTV and FIOS. Glad I don't have Bright House anymore.

 

[Hemi 6.1]

I don't see any message about it on E* yet.

 

[yourbeliefs]

*Sits comfortably watching DirecTV..*

 

[JohnH]

I don't see any message about it on E* yet.

Have you checked TVLand?

 

[Hemi 6.1]

I see it now, It just came accross Comedy Central. So now we have to look at this crap all day long. Did anyone call this number and tell them ,Just maybe they shouldn't charge so much for these channels then? Has anyone called ,Just to see what its says?

 

[VinceT3]

These messages are showing up on all the channels regardless of provider I believe.. I saw it when my kid was watching blues clues this morning..

 

[M Sparks]

Check this out from AP...

"Viacom has asked for fee increases of between 22 percent and 36 percent per channel, an amount that could increase customers' cable bills, Dudley said. Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said the requested increase was in the very low double-digit percentage range."

OK, considering 99% is still double digits, then I guess 22% could be considered "low double digits" Considering TW is giving hard numbers and Viacom is not, I would assume TW is telling something closer to the truth. But look at this...

Viacom said the increases would cost an extra 23 cents a month per subscriber

THAT is a firm number, and it's ridiculously low for 19 channels. And if that's really 22% to 36%, then those channels are already dirt cheap.

I'm so sick of the providers bending over and taking it from ESPN every year without a word of complaint, and then they endanger a huge part of their lineup over a few pennies. You'd be shocked at how much of your subscriber fees go to ESPN and RSNs. They ought to be premium channels (and many of the RSNs used to be), but sports fans would throw a fit.

Of course, channel bloat is a problem too. When Digital Cable and DBS came out, every rushed to create dozens of niche channels to fill the extra space. And I loved it at the time. But half of those channels reverted to being the same generic thing as the original channels. Now we're stuck with them.

My hope...as more and more of the big-time channels go HD, people will simply stop watching the SD channels, and some of them will go away. Providers will tell Viacom "Look we'll be happy to carry MTV2HD, but we don't have room because we're carrying MTV Hits, VH1 Uno, CMT Pure Country, BET Gospel, Nick GAS (ahem)."

 

[The Insider]

I hope they do not give in. Cable bills are high enough as it is. When programming costs go up 10-15% this year, and everyone gets a bill increase of 10-15% dont be pissed if you support viacom in this deal.