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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?
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)
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.