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Echostar/Dish Network Pulls Viacom Channels
RedWolves2 writes "As was mentioned yesterday, Viacom was trying to warn Dish Network customers over the weekend that its channels were going to be pulled from their service. Well today those channels were finally pulled. 'EchoStar Communications Corp. on Tuesday pulled from service 16 of Viacom's local CBS stations and 10 of its national channels after the companies failed to agree on contract terms and prices.' Echostar will provide a $1 monthly credit to customers who lose programming while the channels are unavailable. Sorry but $1 a month is not exactly a fair trade off. DirecTV sounds like a great choice."
I am actually on the Dish networks side on this one; what Viacom is trying to with their crappy channel bundling is a joke. That said however, CBS has CSI and Survivor, for most people $1/month is nowhere near good enough.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
How about reducing all the packages back to where they were last year, and charging the people who actually WANT Viacom's crap a couple bucks a month? I think I can survive without Racist Entertainment TV & No-Music TV.
Yeah, okay, no South Park is gonna hurt, but that's what the net is for.
I have to give Charlie credit for standing up to viacom.
I have Charter Cable, and viacom is running ads stating the obivous, that EchoStar/Dish Network is not meeting demands, and airing it on all providers.
This whole situation does not affect me, why bother me?
...that this would be the beginning of a ala carte(sp) cable service. It didn't happen when Disney and Comcast (AT&T) had their fight, but maybe Echostar can pull it off against Viacom.
Of course, the realist in me knows that my cable bill will go up a few dollars regardless. (Yes, I have cable, but I'm sure Comcast will find a way to increase my bill too.)
If it were not for the lacking DVArchive feature in TiVo, I'd pick up the DirecTiVo immediately. I'd actually get to watch my programs when and where I wanted to (on a plane, in my hotel room, etc). Having to rip out the HDD and de/trans -code the video is not my idea of a user friendly product.
BBH
PS, your GUI rocks.
One of the channels being pulled is Comedy Central, I just canceled my Dish Membership today because of that.
You think the Cable Company would be falling over themselves to get me back, but they're making me wait 5 days to get Cable!!!
... and in the DRM, bind them.
people talk about crap channels on TV, but that's the point. the reason you can't just pick the channels you want, and skip the crap is because companies like viacom make you take the good with the bad.
of all the viacom channels they offer, the one i want is comedy central. that's it. but i still have to get mtv, nickelodian (sp?), and all their other crap. I DON'T WANT IT.
but i have to get it whether i want it or not, because that's the only way viacomm will sell it.
remind anyone of a certain software companies business practices? you want Windows? you're getting IE and WMP bundled together.
good for dish network sticking standing up to them. hell, i'll probably sign up tomorrow in support of the stance they're taking.
I am a DirecTV subscriber, but I've really got to admire Dish' handling of this. Granted, $1/mo. doesn't seem sufficient.
One gripe I have with DirecTV isn't really DirecTV's fault, as evidenced by this thing with EchoStar: why do I have to sit down every couple of months to erase all of the CRAP from "Channels I Receive" list (freestanding TiVo), and pay $50/mo. for the 10 channels I regularly watch?
Packaging isn't just DirecTV/Dish' fault, but the fault of the conglomerates' anti-competitive muscle flexing. You know, if I had to pay $2.00 per month for that channels I do watch (plus $10 for HBO), I'd still be at $50/mo., but I'd be much, much happier about it because I'd know (or at least feel) that I was in control of it.
--Jim (me)
So I'm of a mind to send a message to Viacom: keep your content, I won't miss it. THPHHHHHHHHT! (with apologies to Bill the Cat). I'm much more interested in channels like SciFi, BBC America, IFC, and those wacky independent channels like Worldlink TV.
-- This
If you are running such a big corp, then its your responsibility to forsee and handle problems.
And how would you have anticipated & resolved this problem if you were the president of Dish? Raised everyone's rates? Viacom is being a bully & trying to blackmail Dish into paying an unfair price and force them to carry channels that they don't want to. I don't know how long the negotiations have been going on, but Viacom really doesn't have much to lose here, so I doubt that they've made much in the way of concessions. Why should they. I think that Dish really deserves applause for there decision to stand up to to the bullies under the circumstances.
Here in Columbus (OH), about three years ago the local CBS affiliate started pressuring Time Warner to carry Ohio News Network on their basic analog cable service in order to continue rebroadcasting CBS. It was a mess, and all the other news agencies loved it. Everything went nuts about a month before the contract renewal deadline, and both sides dug in.
About two weeks before the station was to be pulled from the lineup, Time Warner sent rabbit ears to every customer and included instructions (both written and on their special channel running every half hour). If a customer wasn't sure how to set things up, a tech would even come out before the deadline so that CBS would still work seemlessly. Time Warner took the game to a level the CBS affiliate wasn't ready for.
The end result: Time Warner agreed to carry ONN on digital cable, and the CBS station stayed on regular analog cable. I'm not sure, but I don't believe there was even a rate increase given to the CBS station.
I wouldn't be surprised if these tactics by Viacom end up with the exact same result. Dish may lose a few customers in this, but that's nothing compared to the marketshare Viacom loses if people don't just randomly stumble onto their channel and watch for a half hour. If your station isn't even offered, people just can't watch it, and advertisers just don't want to pay lots of money for that. The price of poker is high here, but I'm pretty sure Viacom's in the position with the most to lose (and the potential gains are only modest).
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
I was just watching the Daily Show on Comedy Central, and during the commercial break, just about 30 seconds ago, they ran an ad basically blaming the entire incident on Dish Network and saying, "If you have a friend with Dish, he'll be spending a lot of time on your couch". The punchline at the end of the ad said something like "Comedy Central, now only on Cable and DirecTV".
Frankly, Viacom are the scum of the earth. I used to respect the Daily Show as one of the last bastions of fair and balanced (TM) news reporting available. Jon Stewart and the other correspondents seem to be the only (fake) news reporters that actually tell things the way they are, but for some strange reason they are totally silent about this news story, which is one of the biggest news stories on CNN and all other major news networks. I'm sure Viacom has given them a hush order or some other such mandate, but it really stinks of media bias.
I've lost a lot of respect for the Daily Show today, which used to be one of my favorite programs, and I'm seriously considering starting an email campaign against Viacom.
For those of you wanting to give Viacom a piece of your mind, here is the contact information for the CEO:
Mel Karmazin
M-F 9:00 am to 5:00 pm - (212) 975-6500
or better yet, call him at home on the weekend at:
(212) 956-1007
Cheers, and down with massive media conglomerates.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Why does Viacom bundle channels? What is really in it for them?
Surely they would be better served by killing the underperformers, thus reducing their TCO for the "corporation" as a whole and making more profit on the channels that they did send...
Seems to me that they should concentrate on making their offerings have more appeal if they want them to be generally available through cable and satellite. If the channels do not appeal to a large segment of the public then make them subscription channels, separate in their own right, and give the cable or satellite operator a share of the proceeds. That's a win-win-win. Consumers don't have to have the "martha stewart" channel, the cable/satellite co does not have to pay for it, and the provider gets pay per view dollars.
Oh, but what if those dollars are not forthcoming? Well then, provider, you have learned that your offering is not wanted. Shut it down immediately. First law of the free market.
I'm sorry, but my cable bills are getting outrageous, and I just have basic cable. Cable costs me more and more every year for the same stupid basic channels I've had for the past 10 years.
Part of the reason these bills are skyrocketing is that companies like Viacom are burdened with huge debt.
They can't raise their advertising rates because they don't have the Nelson ratings... get this: Viacom brings us MTV and the likes of Howard Stern. There have been huge public outcries against such programming aired on MTV, Howard Stern and Viacom's other channels/shows. The media response has always been: "If you don't like what you see, change the channel." So that's exactly what people have done. They can't raise advertising rates without the ratings, so they're losing advertisers. Their debt is getting out of control, so they turn to the distributors.
Viacom has told its distributors, specifically Dish Network, that it is raising its rates by six cents per-channel, per-subscriber, per-month. If I were a subscriber to Dish Network, this would mean my monthly bill would need to go up nearly a buck. This is completely outrageous in an industry where 1/4 of a cent in increases is big.
Needless to say, this equates to millions of dollars per-year in added revenue without having to change a single business practice. [Read: easy money]
I say that if Viacom wants more money, they should start underwriting movies and television that people want to watch, just like everyone else.
I applaud Dish Network for putting their foot down.
I say: SUPPORT DISH NETWORK, BOYCOTT VIACOM!
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I won't be switching to DirecTV.
Don't you understand? If DirecTV still has those channels - it means they gave in to Viacom's prices. Don't you want to stay with the carrier that is agressively negotiating pricing? They're saving _you_ money in the long run by not putting up with this BS! This makes Dish Network _more_ attractive to me!