Can you live without The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Hills? Some of you may have to, if Viacom can’t reach a deal by midnight Wednesday that would keep Comedy Central, MTV, and its 18 other networks on Time Warner Cable systems, according to a report in The New York Times. The conglomerate was expected to take out full-page ads in major newspapers today explaining how fans would suffer if Time Warner refuses to ante up in the new year. Viacom is home to kiddie powerhouse Nick (aka, the birthplace of Dora the Explorer, Drake and Josh, and Zoey 101) as well as nets like Comedy Central, VH-1, and Spike TV. Time Warner cable systems reportedly reach up to 13 million subscribers.
Viacom believes the fees they receive for the nets are way too low, given how they attract a healthy percentage of eyeballs for Time Warner. The cable operator, in the meantime, is arguing that Viacom’s profits are down because of the soft ad market and are desperate to increase revenue elsewhere. Stay tuned.
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if time warner loses these channels, than you have one less subscriber, goodbye time warner! don’t to put us subscribers in the middle of your financial wars.
I am so sick and freaking tired of Viacom pulling this crap every few years–”We need more money, boo-hoo, feel sorry for us, we need more money than the billions we pull in annually. If you don’t pay more money we may not be able to buy more mansions and planes while the rest of the country suffers. Oh poor us!” GIVE ME A F#$%ING BREAK!!! Those greedy bastards need to be taught a lesson. So go right on ahead, Viacom. Just go right on ahead and suspend broadcast of your networks—and watch the American public get pissed off. When everything is said and done, you will go bankrupt and NONE of your networks will survive, and look how many more people you put on the unemployment line. Look how much you’ll F#$% up the U.S. economy even more.
Way to go, Viacom, you bunch of a$$holes!!
Thank god for satellite???
For the record I’m a hostage of Time Warner Cable, and my market, Raleigh/Durham, finally got Bravo. BRAVO. Today. 12/31/08. After all the missed seasons of Project Runway and Top Chef. Between their already outrageous rates and laughable customer service, Time Warner gets no sympathy for me. I’m taking Viacom’s side. (I’m going to ignore the fact that EW is a TW spawn, good as it may be.)
Sarah C…I live there too!! I can’t believe we just got Bravo. I too have missed many a season of Project Runway. If Viacom/TWC drops those channels we will also switch. TWC is a monopoly! Booo!
Let them pull their programs from my cable, I will replace them as I have before. Besides, they already finished Avatar on Nick and I own them on DVD now. We don’t need Viacom, they need us. How else can we take a stand?
Don’t worry, Sarah C., you’ll be caught up in no time. I didn’t have Bravo until I moved a year and a half ago, and I was caught up on all (at the time) 3 seasons of each within about two months. Bravo does marathons ALL the time.
NOOOOOO!!! I don’t want to go to dish network. My brother has it and he gets snow whenever it rains. I’m in Columbia, SC where I moved from Atlanta (job), I would give up the Viacom networks, if I could have the networks I lost when I moved.
NOOOOOOOOO KEEP THE DAILY SHOW/ COLBERT REPORT!!!!
Sean, I don’t think you get this. TW could take this in a second and implement the higher fees. However then the higher fees would be passed on to you and I. TW is actually in the right here.
TWC has pulled this before. I think the last time was over a sports channel. They always seem to come to an agreement at the last minute. Whatever – they suck. They know it – we know it. I’ve already told them the day I catch up on my DVR is the day I switch to U-verse.
Here we go again! In my area we had to wait a year to get the CW because of “negotiating”. And what’s worse, we might not have ABC or NBC on our Time Warner service after tomorrow. Again, its “negotiating”. What on earth is there to “negotiate” about to carry two out of the four major networks?! Do they want a mass exodus of subscribers?! How can a cable company not carry two of the four major networks? And now we might lose another 18 channels on top of that?! Am I seriously going to have to hook up the rabbit ears so I can watch Lost? ARRRGGGHH!!!
DirecTV, baby!
Here in Hawaii we are also hostage to Time Warner. I can’t get DirecTV because I live deep in a valley. I noticed the news crawl across my screen last night on Nick and TVLand. This really sucks!!!
It’s sad that we live in a society that even in bad times greed thrives. What happened to the idea that tv was free because advertisers already bought spots that paid for it? MTV should be named the promo channel.. Money for nothing fits even better today. I say let them fight it out and the American people should file a class action suit against Viacom for falsely advertising Music Television.
Yeah, it was Listen 2 This. I liked those, but then they started not being exclusively about music, (they started to include video games & comic books too) http://hardwood-floor.emenace.com/brucehar62/6.html bathroom floor plans undefined