You want your MTV? You got it. Early this morning, Viacom and Time Warner Cable suits settled a dispute over fee hikes in which the cable company threatened to drop MTV, Comedy Central, Nick, and 16 other Viacom networks, ABC News reports. The details of the deal were not made public.
Earlier this week, the media conglomerate and the cable operator engaged in a public pissing match over how much Time Warner pays to offer Viacom’s networks to its nearly 16 million subscribers. Viacom contended that Time Warner was underpaying,given the popularity of its programming; the cable operator accused Viacom of trying to pad its bottom line to make up for slow ad sales.
Lynette Rice contributed to this report.
Just what we need in 2009, more Corporate greed. Are we going to have to bail out Cable companies and tv networks now? Let’s see what their CEO bonuses are. They have a damn monopoly over the cable industry in New York anyway.
It was more than ‘early this morning’. I have a feeling it was all an act from both parties. At midnight and for the next half hour, I check the channels and they were on. No snow, no banner, nothing.
Time Warner and NBC had a pissing match this Fall, and we lost our NBC affiliate for two months, only to come back online just before the Nov sweeps…Now, with this near-blackout of Viacom, we’ve decided to get rid of Time Warner and go another route…TW claims they don’t want to increase the cost passed to customers – but they just increased their bill by 8%…we find they aren’t worth the price and will be using the new Roku Netflix box for movies/tv, along w/ Dish Network for satellite options…adios TW, not sorry to see you go…