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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."
They currently own two broadcast networks (CBS and UPN), and abuse of their holdings like this to bully a carrier like this will get them in hot water with not only the FCC, but the FTC as well.
This sounds familiar to the situation where the owners of KRON [tv] in San Francisco wanted them to air a station of theirs from LA, and withheld broadcast rights to KRON until they caved.
We did without NBC for six months, Charlie [Dish] never caved. NBC moved itself to a San Jose station and we get NBC again.
Viacom probably wants Dish to carry additional channels or drop competing channels from their line-up.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
I'm a directv subscriber, and I'm seeing these messages as well. It scared the hell out of my wife yesterday. She thought it applied to us, and was really mad.
These kind of games are very annoying. Honestly, even if dish network did drop the channels, how long do you think it would last? They would either bring them back or loose a lot of customers.
I'm a Dish subscriber. I saw this message begin to scroll by several times over the weekend, and wondered what the hell was up.
Each time, a few words in, a black bar appeared across the screen to block it out.
This explains a lot. How childish.
Although the ads were -directed- at DishNetwork viewers they were visible on other networks. I saw the "Attention Dish Network Subscribers" message when watching Comedy Central over the weekend -- and I have Time Warner Cable in NYC. I'm most certainly not who they were looking to reach.
If I had to guess, I would say that Dish is going to get sued for the black bar. I don't think they are entitled to alter the broadcast, but only to re-broadcast.
The annoying crawls are not just limited to Dish Network. Viacom has no way to force a crawl onto only Dish Network feeds of their networks, so they have to put the crawls onto the network's backhaul feeds and therefore everybody sees them.
I've been told that DirecTV's call centers have also been geting calls from their own consumers who don't read the whole ticker and are wondering if they're at risk too. (DirecTV's contracts are not lapsing right now, only Dish's.)
The message was something like this:
DishNetwork will stop offering BET, MTV, Nick at Night, Comedy Central...and many others. DishNetwork subscribers, call DishNetwork and tell them you want to keep the channels you paid for.
It seemed to me like they were really saying:
DishNetwork subscribers, please call DishNetwork and tie up their support lines with furious indignance while we spread disinformation!
But the message had a complete lack of WHY those channels were going away, if at all. Anyone have some insight?
I'd have thought that with all the crap their Infinity radio division is having with the FCC, not to mention the Janet Jackson flap they'd be doing their best to stay off the radar screen!
I don't know whether these big companies are arrogant or stupid, but it sure illustrates why media monopolies are bad for the consumer.Its a bloody shame that this is happening. I've found that the DirectTV box is buggy, or full of nasty "features". My carefully pruned favorites lists will have channels added to it at random times. I am often surprised to find that my 30-channel DirectTV favorites list has grown overnight to a 50-channel list with the inclusion of all the DTV informational channels and most of the QVC and shopping type channels. Does anyone elses box do this? I'd like to hope its a coincidental bug, but I'm the ever cynic, so I'm afraid its a very shameful "feature".
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
All you folks paying for some sort of Dish based access feel like cattle now?
Boy I sure do. If anything needs a bit of regulation, this industry does. People should not have to wonder if they can watch their paid for programming or not depending on the whims of some fat ass execs.
Do you think Dish will compensate their customer base? Do they even care about their customer base?
Too many programming choices are an either or bundle situation. People are stuck paying high rates in return for few real choices about their programming.
Dish and Direct TV both should be forced to carry programming on a RAND basis. Their customers should be able to choose what they want with a finer grained degree than they do now.
The bundled programming does not save any of us a dime because the 30 percent of good channels are spread throughout the bundles. This forces people to just pay for all the crap at once, rather than be able to pick 'n choose.
We are seeing this because there is no real check on the power these distributors have over both their customer base and those who seek to distribute programming.
Viacom is going to lose on this one because Dish holds most all the cards. People are going to wonder what happened. Dish will make sure and tell them their version first.
Blogging because I can...
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.
Viacom basically wants the right to say "We started this new Nicktoons channel. You have to take it (and pay for it) or lose all of the MTV Networks package channels." Dish Network sees Nicktoons as having no value to them since it at this point consists of only programs that have already run on the main Nick network.
There's the core source of the dispute.
I have DirecTV. I'd love to see them (DTV, Dish, cable co's) break these blocs of extra-cost channels out as separate options just like the premium movie channels.
You want the Viacom channels?
You want the ESPN lineup?
You want the Disney lineup?
You want the Discovery/History channels?
You want Starz?
You want Cinemax?
etc. etc.
I like Comedy Central, but if it was the only channel I wanted among all the other Viacom garbage, I'd skip if it would save me money.
I'd also like to not pay for all that sports programming I never watch!
Since the content providers only get paid per subscribing household, they'd find out real quick how valuable their content is when it comes as a distinct package rather than scattered throughout all the current tiers.
ON DELETE CASCADE
Way back during the C band dish era I worked for a third party packager. I must say that Viacom's methods closely match Microsoft's. Whenever they would have a Channel that wasn't selling very well they would make you tie it to a more popular station. Back then ESPN was a big seller and VH1 was having some trouble. Their soultion was to allow the packager to sell ESPN only if VH1 was included. Basically they were forcing the customers to pay for VH1 whether they wanted it or not. After caving in to them for a couple of years we finally called their bluff. We told them we would be dropping Showtime and The Movie Channel as a result of their forcing channels on customers. We even printed up 40,000 bill inserts notifying customers that we would no longer be offering the channels and anyone with a current subscription would be refunded the balance and be given three months of HBO/Cinemax free. Faced with losing 40,000 customers and giving HBO/Cinemax a PR win Viacom dropped the bundling requirement for us. I cna't help but feel like Dish is facing the same thing we were. If they stick to their guns Vicom will cave, the scrolling message shows that they are desperate.
Your homeowner's association may SAY you can't have a dish, but according to the Federal Government, you are allowed to have one, as long as it's all contained on your property. This was to prevent cable companies from paying off homeowner's associations to make satellite TV illegal. Fuck the cable companies, fuck the homeowners. Get a nice big dish :)
My other car is first.