Viacom, Time Warner Cable settle contract dispute

[babylonsister]

Viacom, Time Warner Cable settle contract dispute

Viacom had threatened to pull 19 of its cable channels, including Nickelodeon, MTV, VH-1 and Comedy Central, from the cable firm's systems.

By Meg James
1:53 PM PST, January 1, 2009


Facing a backlash from TV viewers furious at the prospect of losing "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Dora the Explorer," two media giants reached a new programming agreement that keeps those popular cartoon characters on the channels of the country's second-largest cable operator.

Viacom Inc. had threatened to pull 19 of its cable channels, including Nickelodeon, MTV, VH-1 and Comedy Central, from the Time Warner Cable Inc. systems at midnight Wednesday when their previous two-year contract expired.

At midnight in New York, minutes into the new year, Viacom granted an extension that allowed the two sides to keep talking. They then clinched a deal. The New Year's Day accord avoided a blackout of Viacom's programming in 13.3 million homes in the U.S. served by Time Warner Cable Inc., including nearly 2 million in the Los Angeles area.

The two companies said they expected to finalize the details of the agreement over the next several days.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-viacom2-2009jan02,0,1305999.story

[SoCalDem]

1. This is precisely why cable companies bundle their channels the way they do

Each tier has a few primo channels that people want badly enough, so they pay for all the el-crappo-grande channels in that tier, just to get the one or two they really want..

It's infuriating, but short of paying a "per channel" a la carte rate, it's only going to get worse..

a la carte sounds great, on its face, BUT when "not enough people" are willing to pay a stand-alone fee for the niche channels, they go away completely..channels like Link, FSTV, and a lot of the specialty channels..

Cable companies would LOVE a la carte service, because that would make it easier to charge more for the popular ones, and to jettison the smaller channels.

[Duckhunter935]

2. Just an excuse to raise my rates another 5-10 dollars

[Berry Cool]

3. That's what I figure.

For all we know this whole Viacom threat thing was actually a bargain between them and Time Warner so Time Warner has an excuse to jack up its rates again. "Look...we saved all your Viacom channels for you...but it cost us...so we're taking it out of your hide."

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Time to turn the tables on them, folks.

They have done this before...using the customer as a bat to hit the opposing company, then justifying raisigng fees after they "win".
Turning the tables means we, the people, use the advertisers to hit the greedy providers.

boycott time.