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Viacom and DishNetwork Battle On Air Over Contract
An anonymous reader writes "This weekend, Viacom stations began scrolling messages on their cable stations(MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, etc) stating that DishNetwork may soon be removing the channels from its lineup and urging subscribers to call DishNetwork. DishNetwork subscribers(me!) may have begun to see black bars cover the messages and calls to DishNetwork regarding the messages were greeted with a recording telling subscribers to call the President and GM of KCBS. These antics stem from lawsuits here. I, for one, will be switching to DirecTV if they don't get this figured out."
Here's the list of channels that will fall off of Dish Network if there's no deal by 11:59:59 PM ET tonight:
BET
Comedy Central
MTV
MTV2
Nick Games & Sports
Nickelodeon/Nick at Night (Both East and West versions)
Noggin/The N
VH1
VH1 Classic
All CBS O&O stations (listed here) within their local markets. (Those seeing WCBS, KCBS, or WBZ as a distant CBS service outside of their natrual zones will not be affected.)
All UPN O&O stations (listed here) within their local markets. (Those seeing WSBK as a superstation outside of Boston will not be affected.)
KCAL in the Los Angeles area.
Dish Network is trying to hold the line on the wholesale price of content. DirecTV, by comparison, just raised prices for their main content packages.
So, if you want to get your content from the low-price supplier, you want to be with Dish Network and put up with these occasional squabbles. If you want a distributor that has a history of bending over whenever the prices go up, you go to DirecTV or your local cable company. Competition in a marketplace is good that way...
You are wrong. DirecTV is owned by Hughes (GM) and is being bought out by Murdoch (who owns NewsCorp). DishNetwork wanted to purchase DTV but the FCC (or pehaps DOJ or both) put the kibosh on that, as there would then only be 1 sat provider. Not sure I like Murdoch better owning my prefered form of TV delivery, but oh well.
Substantially better writeup of the issues involved here.
I actually work For MTV Networks,
I'm not happy about this either, but from I was told by management, Dish wants to pick and choose what they want to air, instead of taking packages. (ie they want MTV MTV2, Nick, and Comedy central but not Spike and cmt, Im not sure if the exact grouping though...) and Viacoms stance is its a package, they want some they take them all. This has started a pissing contest.
Over the weekend We started moving the location of the crawl in order for it to be seen despite the black bar.
At least they tried to black it out. Viacom started moving their crawl around the screen, and the EchoStar folks blew it several times. Childishness all around.
Last I heard, Viacom wants Dish to carry Nickelodeon's GAS channel or some such... and Dish said no, so Viacom said you can't carry anything then unless you pay us more money.
Dish already carries Nick GAS. It's Nicktoons that DirecTV recently added but Dish seems to be refusing to.
BTW, you will still get WBZ and WSBK so long as you're not local to Boston. The distant rights to those stations are granted by law, Viacom can't take those stations away.
I don't know jack about the rate increases and how fair they are, though I have to wonder how much extra commercial networks (ALL of the affected broadcast/cable channels have paid commercial advertising) should be expecting Dish Network and, by extension, their customers to pay for those channels. But the Nicktoons issue is a clear example of a media conglomerate using its consolidated power to force the purchase of something that the customer doesn't want.
The only thing that would really affect me (and deeply at that) is the loss of Comedy Central. But I'm willing to put up with that in the hopes that the little guy (Echostar) can put the big guy (Viacom) in his place.
Tell them how annoyed your are that they'd try and win in the court of public opinion instead of following regular, non-annoying negotiations:
Viacom
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
tel.(212) 258-6000
fax: (212) 258-6464
Your comment about the commercials is a bit of a simplification. The cable/dish companies do indeed inject commercials into the content, but only in the places that the company providing the feed lets them. If you don't believe me, check out MTV or any other channel on C Band. They have lots of commercials. The same commercials that they have on little dish/cable networks...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The vast majority of commericals on cable channels come from the content supplier. Roughly only 1 to 3 minutes of ad time per hour (depending on what channel we're talking about) goes to the signal distributor.
I can't say whether you can select channels a la carte there where you are in Florida - I don't have that information. What I can respond to is the statement that law requires it.
The Cable Act of 1992 actually says that they cannot link "premium" channels, such as HBO, Cinemax, etc., to a specific "tier" of programming. That is - you cannot be required to buy the "expanded" package just to get HBO. The law also says that they cannot require you to buy a package of premium channels - you can pick and choose which premium channel you want.
The law does NOT say anything about picking and choosing your standard channels a la carte. If your cable provider allows you to do this - which I highly doubt - it's not because it's required by law, it's just because the provider either wants to be nice or feels that it's a business advantage to do so.
Here's a transcript of a television news story that talks about this.