Time Warner Cable Set To Lose Viacom Channels

Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central are set to disappear from Time Warner Cable's lineup on Midnight Wednesday, if a deal with Viacom doesn't go through soon.

Viacom wants to charge an extra 25 cents a month for its channels - about $3 a year. Time Warner has come back and said that if Viacom makes good on its threat, other networks will follow suit, ultimately adding nearly $30 a month to your cable bill.

"Advertising revenue stinks so they are looking to stick our customers for the difference," said Alex Dudley, Time Warner Cable spokesman. "They are holding our customers hostage for a bunch of networks with sagging ratings and only one or two good channels. We have to hold the line for our customers."

The interesting angle to this story is that most of Viacom's programming is available absolutely free on the interweb. That means that any smart cable subscriber can just download the programs they'd want to watch anyway, so Viacom's position is decidedly shaky.

Time Warner also doesn't have to worry about the NFL playoffs being pulled, as Viacom no longer owns CBS. That makes the idea of pulling 23 channels for an extra 25 cents seem just a little like money-grabbing.

Source: LA Times
(Image)
Newslink from 007Loser.

Permalink

It seems rather petty. An extra $30 a month is a bit much if other networks decide to do this as well.

All of the networks in question have a scrolling message on them encoraging customers to call Time Warner and some other cable company and tell them you WANT TO KEEP THESE STATIONS. (Bold caps theirs.) They of course neglected to mention that they are raising the prices on your cable bills.

Fun fact from the inside for att. From what I heard they are increasing the cost of their tv service by 7 bucks a month to "stay competative with their competitors". Where does increasing the cost of tv service stay competative? Wouldn't having the lowest price like their dsl be the best idea to stay competative?

I saw a story about this on Yahoo that had me cracking up in spite of myself. Listen to the details of this add from Viacom.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081231/ap_on_bi_ge/viacom_time_warner_cable

Instead, Viacom appealed directly to Time Warner Cable's customers, with TV ads in major markets. In Wednesday's New York Times, the company ran a full-page, color advertisement with Nickelodeon's animated bilingual heroine "Dora the Explorer" crying and clinging to her monkey pal, Boots.

"Why is Dora crying?" the ad asks. "Time Warner Cable is taking Dora off the air tonight!" The ad urges viewers to call Time Warner Cable and demand that their favorite shows remain on the air.

Imagine the poor child that sees this add.

Only Time-Warner Cable. I hate that company so much. Their service stinks, they shove ads down their customers throats for their crappy bundles and now this.

Time-Warner Cable sucks. Someone convince my stupid mother to get a sattelite dish, please.

The irony of this, is that Time-Warner Cable is ALWAYS raising their rates. But I guess it's only ok when they do it. They do have a cable monopoly, after all.

but...I want the Daily Show on the air! How else will I learn about whats going on in the world?

the protaginist:
but...I want the Daily Show on the air! How else will I learn about whats going on in the world?

Watch it on the internet?

This reminds me of something similar that happened in the UK. Basically BSkyB, owned by ye olde media tyrant Rupert Murdoch, wanted more money from rival company Virgin Media to show some of their channels. Virgin refused. They both started an advertising campaign to get people on their side.

In the end virgin lost the channels, but got them back recently. However we didn't lose much, all the sky channels showed anyway were endless reruns of stargate, star trek, simpsons, futurama and Malcom in the middle.

I'm not excusing Viacom for money-grubbing. I'm saying why is it ok for TWC to attack Viacom for what it does all the time? I'm pointing out hypocracy.

Besides, if I can't watch South Park on Time-Warner Cable, why do I want it then? This is just a flimsy attempt by TWC to make it look like they actually care about their customers.

Time-Warner Cable is like a slimy politician. Shaking your hand with their right hand and picking your pocket with the left.

johnx61:
Only Time-Warner Cable. I hate that company so much. Their service stinks, they shove ads down their customers throats for their crappy bundles and now this.

Time-Warner Cable sucks. Someone convince my stupid mother to get a sattelite dish, please.

The irony of this, is that Time-Warner Cable is ALWAYS raising their rates. But I guess it's only ok when they do it. They do have a cable monopoly, after all.

You realize that every thing you just said applies to every cable company.

You mean there are others besides, TWC? Oh yah, there are. But not where I live. You basically have two choices in Southern California. Satellite or Time-Warner. There are no other cable companies out here, there used to be a few but Time Warner swooped in with their huge bag of money and bought them all out.

If it was up to me, I would have ditched TWC along time ago. It's not up to me though. My mother will stick with TWC until the end because she only ever watches Monk and the news and because she had a bad experience with a DirecTV installer.

Hmm. Giant media conglomerates with practical but not official monopolies are ignoring customer service so they can fight about who gets to buy a new jet.

Not really news, is it? I just find it funny that this sort of thing was the whole reason monopolies were supposed to be illegal in the first place. You know, like how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held all the mortgages, and then when the housing market went bad, they went belly-up and pulled the rest of the economy down with them?

Good to know we've aggressively forgotten lessons learned more than a hundred years ago for no better reason than rich guys want to buy new jets. Ah, progress.

So no more Spongebob? Sweet. I don't watch TV anymore but no Spongebob is good news to me

Never watch 'em anyway.

I just wish Disney would do this, though... Its poisioning our children!

I love the philosophy, "We have two options to recover from poor ratings... work on better programming, or force the people who aren't watching the crappy programs to begin with to pay more for them?"

I better not lose Comedy Central, it's all I bloody watch anymore. Comedy Central, Food Network, History Channel, Discovery Channel.

I have 128 channels. I watch 4. Oh and my parents watch the news.

I despise cable/satellite companies. Why do I have to buy these huge blocks of channels? I have 70 channels and only watch Discovery Channel(Mythbusters), History Channel, and Fox (House)

Thank God for watching shows on the internet, in all seriousness how many people actually watch more than 4-5ish channels and even then only a handful of programs on each one? I remember back in the day when people would brag they had like 200+ channels like it was a good thing.

I noticed that ticker isn't on the channels anymore so I guess they reached an agreement. So now my cable bill is gonna go sky high. (I sleep with the TV on)

The ticker isn't on mine anymore either, went off late afternoon/evening. Also, I checked at 12:00 EST, then CST, then now, and I still have all those channels.

I would have been real angry if Comedy Central went away. It always has something at least watchable on. Watching 45 minutes of the middle of some dumb, unheard of movie, well worth it.

johnx61:
You mean there are others besides, TWC? Oh yah, there are. But not where I live. You basically have two choices in Southern California. Satellite or Time-Warner. There are no other cable companies out here, there used to be a few but Time Warner swooped in with their huge bag of money and bought them all out.

If it was up to me, I would have ditched TWC along time ago. It's not up to me though. My mother will stick with TWC until the end because she only ever watches Monk and the news and because she had a bad experience with a DirecTV installer.

*cough*Cox Cable*cough* You know the other cable company in Southern California.

Seems a settlement has been reached.

Now to wait and see how much more we will have to pay for Cable...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,474825,00.html

Mymir:
Seems a settlement has been reached.

Now to wait and see how much more we will have to pay for Cable...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,474825,00.html

Cheers Mymir. Wouldn't want anyone here to go without Dora. :)

It's actually even more interesting.

For starters, TWC isn't being greedy, they're being cheap, a subtle distinction that will become clear shortly. It's Viacomm that's being greedy.

Now:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090102-in-dispute-viacom-threatens-to-pull-shows-on-tv-and-online.html

Apparently, they were also threatening to deny access to their streamed content to TWC internet subscribers, as well.

Here's where it gets funny. Here we have a content provider demanding more money from a service provider's subscriber stream. Two years ago, we had an AT&T VP, a service provider, looking for a way to charge third party content providers for premium access to his subscriber base.

I think there's a LOT more politics here than we'll ever know about. I'll keep an eye on this one.

I haven't had "T.V." for almost 7 years now, mainly due to advertising whores. I have simply been downloading the shows I wish to watch. It'd be nice if we had a choice not to accept advertising or not legally rather than have it shoved down our throat. Until then, I will continue to bypass their advertisments and download the very few shows that I am actually interested in rather than pay ridiculous money for a package of channels, most of which I will never watch.

Boy will I be happy when the entertainment industry crashes, especially if it keeps going down the road that it is travelling.