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Viacom and DirecTV Reach New Agreement
An anonymous reader writes "About 10 days after Viacom pulled 26 channels from DirecTV over a contract dispute, the two companies have finally come to an agreement that should have DirecTV fans in need of their MTV rejoicing. While precise details of the newly agreed upon contract weren't made public, Bloomberg is reporting that the new contract is for 7 years with Viacom set to receive more than $600 million a year from DirecTV. That represents a 20% payment increase from the previous contract and is slightly below the 30% increase, or $1 billion, Viacom was initially pushing for."
The disturbing part of this dispute, to me, was how Viacom pulled its shows from the internet in addition to DirecTV. Advertising your side of the story is one thing, but going out of your way to directly frustrate viewers who are interested in your shows seems like bad business.
And the public library is still free.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It's been about 7 years for me. I have a cheap Netflix account and a server full of ripped media. It all plays just fine through my Boxee at almost no cost at all. I don't watch more than a couple of hours of movie/television in any given day anyway. I pity people who have nothing better to do in life than sit around watching the latest reality show.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I've never understood cable though, if I'm paying for cable and the cable company is paying other companies for their content, shouldn't it be ad free?
Why? Why would the cable company forego the ad revenue? Just cause ads bother you?
It's not like people cancel or refuse to subscribe due to the commercials.
1. I wouldn't put MTV in the keep category. Perhaps in the 80s with Liquid Television and Remote Control. But, their reality TV is abysmal, at best. Nick is great for kids. 2. Yeah, the commercials really bug me. In most of the EU, there's a huge "Commercial" text on the screen with a timer counting down to 00:00 so you know when the programming will be back on. Sometimes, it's 5mins and it's great that I know exactly how long I have.
"The disturbing part of this dispute, to me, was how Viacom pulled its shows from the internet in addition to DirecTV. Advertising your side of the story is one thing, but going out of your way to directly frustrate viewers who are interested in your shows seems like bad business."
This was one of DirecTVs key complaints. Why should DirecTV pay for content that Viacom was giving away for free on the internet? Not really an incentive to "pay" for that same content.
I've said that for years. PLUS, if so many of Viacom's channels are primarily AD-supported (MTV and Nickleodeon runs TONS of commercials), pulling the channels off of Direct TV means fewer viewers, meaning the advertisers are getting ripped off by Viacom. Viacom and companies like it should be PAYING the cable and satellite companies to carry their channels. If you want to charge for access to the channels, those channels shouldn't be double-dipping and showing commercials as well....
I see so many comments here about "I went full media center" or "TV, who watches TV???". My main source of viewing material is League of Legends streams, but I still pay for DirecTV. Why? I have 3 children. NickJR is an amazing channel for kids under 7. It's one of two channels I let them watch without me being over their shoulders.
And, yes, I have NetFlix. But, it works on one TV (the one with the PS3 on it which coincidentally is the same one with the HDMI to the PC). I have three televisions. My kids can easily watch NickJR in the playroom or bedrooms. That by itself makes me glad to pay the $70 a month that also lets me watch HD football and the occasional trash TV when I don't have anything else going on.
TLDR; I'm more than willing to pay the $70 because it adds value to my household. I don't understand all the hate around here - don't use the service if you don't like it.
Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television
No, because this is only Viacom. All programmers continually pull this shit. The only solution is to start paring the number of channels. The programmers anticipate this and keep large groups of channels together in all-or-nothing packages. The same things people bitch about the cable or satellite companies doing are the same things the programmers do to the providers. Providers need to start holding their ground on these things and be willing to permanently give up certain channels if necessary.
That's part of the reason Cable/Satellite doesn't offer "build-your-own" packages where you can choose the channels you want....
Nick is not great for kids. Nick is great for lazy parents.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
$70 is what I pay out of pocket. Also, letting my kids watch TV in no way implies that is all I do with my children. That "all or nothing" attitude is not constructive at all for a conversation.
Redstone et al. at Viacom got exposed to a big hot reality beam during the last two weeks.
The chronology of events is astonishing to me. Viacom pulls their content from DirecTV. DirecTV actually argues that their subscribers can get their Daily Show fix from the Internet thereby introducing millions of dearly paying subscribers to a delivery platform they had previously slouched away from. Viacom reacts to this by briefly pulling their content off the Internet, punishing millions of people that have never subscribed to DirecTV. Under pressure by their streaming advertisers and outraged Internet audience Viacom relents and puts the content back up!
DirecTV should have held out longer. Viacom blinked when they discovered they couldn't abuse their audience with impunity. That's when you're supposed go for the jugular.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Perhaps there's a lot of pay per view porn on there?
The bill would be more likely a $1000 per month then.
Not being funny either. That shit is expensive. I know somebody that was acting as a legal guardian for a mentally challenged man and about $1500 dollars got racked up in one month. To make matters worse, the cable company flatly refused to offer any kind of assistance on the matter on the 2nd time around when they had lied about blocking it on the service, but still allowed it.
Regarding the ads, yes, that is exactly the premise cable companies launched their service with. You paid a monthly fee and got ad-free programming.
That's nonsense.
Cable companies grew out of the need in cities for a way to provide local broadcast channels to lots of people who were living in little boxes called apartment buildings. Rabbit ears on the telly didn't cut it when you live in a steel-girder box. The first systems were called MATV, for Master Antenna TV, or CATV for Community Antenna TV, where the antenna was on the roof and the "cable system" ran just throughout the building.
Smart entrepreneurs formed companies to do this wiring for the landlords. Smart landlords, or cheap ones who owned lots of buildings, started linking buildings to save money. Then larger companies stepped in and an industry was born.
Note that the prime reason for these systems was to redistribute the commercial TV already being broadcast. You paid your monthly fee and got a good signal for the AD SUPPORTED commercial TV channels without needing to put out your own antenna.
A few microwave services popped up to deliver premium content without wires, but those were doomed to failure as soon as cable companies started carrying premium content.
So no, the premise cable companies started with was NOT to provide premium services (because those content providers didn't exist when cable got started) it was to provide a good signal for the existing ad-supported TV for money.
I remember very well the launch of what the local cable company was calling "The Q Channel", which was really HBO before HBO was well known under that brand. The cable system had been in place for a decade before that.
It's not like people cancel or refuse to subscribe due to the commercials.
Oh YES they do. That is a reason why people are "cutting the cord" more and more each year, although the primary ones are cost and ease of use. Don't think it was coincidence that they shut off the Internet distribution channels at the same time either. It was paramount that during this dispute that people paying for cable did not get any kind of inkling of what a world without Cable TV could be like.
I was an "early adopter" of Cable TV free lifestyle. It's a lot easier now than it was nearly 10 years ago too. Legal or not, there are more and more ad free distribution channels popping up each day.
Once people experience ad free programming it becomes very addictive. You start to realize the incredible mind numbing bullshit you have to wade through just to get some programming. The times I have been over at friends houses watching TV with them, just channel surfing, was painful. It is close to 50% commercials now, and something like 80% of every channel you are flipping to is currently playing a commercial. I think they got smart and synced up their commercials so that you will be watching a commercial no matter what if you are surfing.
People only put up with advertisements because they are complacent and/or don't know about a solution to not have them. It is not surprising that once a solution becomes available that people jump.
Disturbing and bad business to pull their shows from the Internet? Any other action would have been like suicide for Viacom. As it stands right now, I guarantee you that non-trivial percentage of Viacom subscribers through DirectTV now have the knowledge and impetus to cut the cord for good.
I've never understood cable though, if I'm paying for cable and the cable company is paying other companies for their content, shouldn't it be ad free?
It was, thirty years ago. At the time, everyone poo-pooed the idea of paying for TV, since everyone had been watching for free since the device was invented. Ten bucks a month for the OTA channels (which had commercials but no snow or ghosts) and a dozen or so very good, ad-free cable channels; empty-V (they played videos then, not stupid reality shows), Discovery (they had science then, not "trick my truck" and "ice trucks"), HBO was even included in the $10 per month cost. No cencorship on the cable channels, which was a good draw, too.
Now? They censor all the funny parts (like "don't use that kind of language in front of my young son" when the language had been cut). Most of the cable channels' programming has gone WAY downhill; the only thing on Discovery worth watching is MythBusters, empty-V no longer has videos, but "look at all my bling" reality shows, the other channels had similarly deteriorated, while they added so many sports channels that you now see the "sports" of pool and poker on ESPN. I have to pay fo rthe golf channel? Fuck that! I have to pay for BET? Fuck that. I have to pay for two dozen women's channels and children's channels? Fuck that. Shopping channels? I have to PAY to watch shows that are nothing but commercials? I have to PAY to not only watch commercials, but to watch commercials overlaid over the programming FUCK THAT WITH A HOT SOLDERING IRON!!!
The cable and satellite companies can kiss my hairy white ass! When they stop putting commercials on cable shows and let me choose the channels I want a la carte, I might consider going back. Unless, of course, History and Discovery and the other cable channels deteriorate in quality even more.
Free Martian Whores!
Cheers. You can remove that comma though, don't know what I was thinking there.
I blame the educational programming on TV myself.