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Price Dispute Means 800k Customers Lose TV Channels In Sweden (telecompaper.com)
Z00L00K writes: Due to a conflict between the cable operators and the channel providers, 800,000 to 900,000 customers will lose some of the most-viewed TV channels in Sweden, among them Eurosport, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Additional customers in Norway will also lose channels. This is caused by a considerable hike in price for the channels from the provider Discovery Networks. However the amount of money involved is still kept secret for negotiation and business reasons. "Telenor Broadcast arm Canal Digital said Discovery Networks has told it that it will withdraw its channels from Canal Digital Sweden and sister company Bredbandsbolaget from 01 February. This follows Discovery's attempts to raise prices and pay for a number of channels that viewers had not chosen. This will affect their approximately 800,000 customers while a new contract is negotiated. Telenor Sweden customers will not able to watch Kanal 5 or the other Discovery channels until a deal is reached." Considering that Sweden has a population of almost 10 million the impact is noticeable.
I'm one of the affected Norwegian customers, and frankly couldn't care less that some channels are gone. What -I- want to know, is why I cannot buy broadband without having to pay for a lot of nonsense TV content. No one in my family watches TV anymore, and the consumer authorities have already pointed out repeatedly that this bundling practice needs to stop.
Discovery used to be pretty good, maybe 15 years ago. Now it is all reality TV with fake drama to disguise the fact that the same things happen over and over. It went from being one of the best channels to one of the worst, or maybe it's just in the middle because most of the rest suck just as bad. I know I'm going to get backlash for being one of those guys, but I'll say it anyway: ditch your TV subscription and get your shows over the air and online. Yes, yes, I'll concede you may want satellite if you live out in the boonies because OTA is out of range and you can't get decent internet speeds.