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Viacom and DishNetwork Battle On Air Over Contract

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the this-is-just-bizarre dept.

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."

3 of 604 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Very Annoying by jellomizer · · Score: 0, Troll

    Wow perhaps she should watch a little less TV. If the idea of loosing TV stations fear and anger. Then you should watch a little less TV. Yea it will be the shame to loose those channels that excel in putting advertisements every 3 minutes.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. Re:I work there.. by CKW · · Score: 0, Troll

    Maybe we should pass a law.

    *NO ENTITY* may own more than ONE SINGLE broadcast entity or content source (aka show), except though minority common stock ownership. Break up EVERY SINGLE conglomerate into individual competing parts.

    Seriously, the idea of corporations is one thing, but conglomerates composed of LITERALLY hundreds of corporations - maybe we should ban those.

    How's that for promoting competition and the marketplace. ;-)

  3. Re:Why are we even seeing this battle? by Romeozulu · · Score: 0, Troll

    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 problem here is that the world needs diversity. If people got to choose only the channels they wanted, we would have more "crap" then ever, because only the top 10 channels/shows would ever be shown, and that "top ten" would be from the average American's top ten. By selling packages, networks get the most successful channels/programs to fund the more obscure ones. Ones that appeal to more nitch audiences.