DirecTV Drops Viacom Channels 378
An anonymous reader writes "DirecTV has dropped all of Viacom's channels. This includes channels such as MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon. The drop is reported to be over a carrier fee dispute. It appears programming content can magically disappear from satellite, too, and not just from streaming services. Viacom said it was 'because contract talks with DirecTV had “reached an impasse.” DirecTV, in turn, said in a statement that it had offered Viacom “increased fees for their networks going forward; we just can’t afford the extreme increases they are asking for.”' I guess pirating and physical media is the only way to make sure the content we pay for doesn't disappear."
Re:What does that do to contracts? (Score:5, Informative)
DirecTV Terms of Service
(d) Our Programming Changes. Many factors affect the availability, cost and quality of programming and may influence the decision to raise prices and the amount of any increase. These include, among others, programming and other costs, consumer demand, market and shareholder expectations, and changing business conditions. Accordingly, we must reserve the unrestricted right to change, rearrange, add or delete our programming packages, the selections in those packages, our prices, and any other Service we offer, at any time. We will endeavor to notify you of any change that is within our reasonable control and its effective date. In most cases this notice will be about one month in advance. You always have the right to cancel your Service, in whole or in part, if you do not accept the change (see Section 5). If you cancel your Service, a deactivation fee (described in Sections 2 & 5(b)) or other charges may apply. Credits, if any, to your account will be posted as described in Section 5. If you do not cancel, your continued receipt of our Service will constitute acceptance.
I would assume most or all other carriers have similar clauses.
Re:And to compensate customers... (Score:5, Informative)
In case you were wondering. (Score:4, Informative)
They own the following (via Wikipedia):
MTV, MTV2, MTV Tr3Âs, MTV Desi, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, mtvU, Nickelodeon, Nick 2/Nick at Nite, Nick Jr., TeenNick, Nicktoons, CMT, CMT Pure Country, CMT (Canada) (10%), TV Land, VH1, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, BET Networks, BET, BET Hip-Hop, BET Gospel, Centric, Palladia, Comedy Central, Logo, TMF, VIVA and Spike.
Of course the real loss there is Nickelodeon. Folks have to plop their kids down in front of something and no Nickelodeon or Nick Jr. means crying young 'uns and cancelled service. Not a pleasant thought if I were DirecTV.
Re:I don't see much to miss (Score:4, Informative)
All the good parts of the Daily Show and spinoffs are available legally on the 'net anyway. So this wouldn't be a loss for me...
but still I always hope that this sort of idiocy causes drops en masse. I wouldn't bet any money on that, however... it's just a hope that "consumers" might actually kick a corporation in the ass for being jackasses for once.
Re:Terminate Contract? (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder if there is verbiage in consumer's contracts that allow them to end it early with no fee due to an adverse change
Yes. You can get out for $15.
(d) Our Programming Changes. Many factors affect the availability, cost and quality of programming and may influence the decision to raise prices and the amount of any increase. These include, among others, programming and other costs, consumer demand, market and shareholder expectations, and changing business conditions. Accordingly, we must reserve the unrestricted right to change, rearrange, add or delete our programming packages, the selections in those packages, our prices, and any other Service we offer, at any time. We will endeavor to notify you of any change that is within our reasonable control and its effective date. In most cases this notice will be about one month in advance. You always have the right to cancel your Service, in whole or in part, if you do not accept the change (see Section 5). If you cancel your Service, a deactivation fee (described in Sections 2 & 5(b)) or other charges may apply. Credits, if any, to your account will be posted as described in Section 5. If you do not cancel, your continued receipt of our Service will constitute acceptance.
Hilarious duelling message scrollers (Score:4, Informative)
So I have DirecTV and was watching a DVRed show on ComedyCentral last night and noticed that Viacom had added a scrolling message to the bottom of the screen where they published the DirecTV customer service number and told everyone to call DirecTV to protest the removal of Viacom channels. So DirecTV allows that to stand, but shrunk the actual broadcast channel subtly, so they could fit their own scrolling message below the Viacom one telling subscribers that Viacom are greedy bastards that want to charge DirecTV a billion extra dollars for their channels.
Hilarious. Then it went black at 9pm PDT and switched to one of those generic channel selector guide channels.
Whatever... I guess I'll have to browse Youtube to get my fill of Tosh.0-style Internet video idiocy for a couple weeks until the babies work out an agreement.
Re:I don't see much to miss (Score:5, Informative)
There is a considerable hypocrisy in DirectTV's CEO looping a video on the down channels complaining about how awful it is that Viacom is forcing them to take all the channels as one package.
I would love it if DirectTV let me buy the few channels they have we still watch ala carte for a small fraction of what they are charging for their packages.
As others have said, Viacom expecting another billion dollars for their especially pathetic channel line up is over the top. Once you get past The Daily Show, South Park and Colbert there is absolutely nothing Viacom is offering that is worth paying for. And since they are all loaded with ads, why do people even have to pay for them like they are premium channels.
I would also greatly appreciate if their boxes were setup to kill all the annoying shopping and religious channels they are carrying with simple switches. You can setup a custom guide without them but since they constantly move their channels around it is annoying to maintain it. Of course I imagine the shopping channels are paying them to force their channels down the throats of their customers so. . .
One of the great mysteries of life to me is why people watch shopping channels or buy the crap they sell keeping them in business. Consumerism has achieved its ultimate goal when people actually sit and watch channels that are nothing but ads. The pinnacle of this phenomenon is I recently saw a shopping channel purportedly selling houses in Florida. Pretty much the last thing anyone should be doing is buying real-estate sight unseen on a shopping channel using an auction that is guaranteed to be rigged.
Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Informative)
Any reason why Viacom or any other such wastewater producer can't just switch to streaming all their shows? ...Seems like a revenue source waiting to be tapped.
As someone who covers media companies for an investment firm and spends a lot of my work thinking about things like this, they would lose out on a lot of money if they did that. Content owners currently have a dual stream revenue source. One are the monthly affiliate fees paid by you through the cable provider. The other is advertising. The content owners have been getting filthy rich through this model and have no desire to give it up.
If they were to start going directly to the end users and charging you, chances are they would lose more money than they made under the old model. The first reason is there is no (or little) advertising in the model you are proposing. So your fees would have to cover all the money they make off of advertising. Which will likely never happen. The second is that, in the current model, many people pay monthly affiliate fees for channels they would not purchase on a standalone basis (this is the same reason why you will likely never see à la carte channels) and cable providers would demand lower affiliate fees, or drop the channels altogether, if the content owners started going direct to the end user. So your fee to get the streaming portion would have to be quite high because you are currently being subsidized by advertising and a lot of people who never watch the channel.
I should note that I would love to see à la carte programming, but I'm just explaining why you're not going to see it right now. However, there may come a point when it starts happening. It really comes down to simple economics. If enough people start cutting the cord, or something else disrupts the current model enough, then they will start moving to other models. But right now it's way too lucrative for them to ever give it up.
Re:I don't see much to miss (Score:5, Informative)
There is a considerable hypocrisy in DirectTV's CEO looping a video on the down channels complaining about how awful it is that Viacom is forcing them to take all the channels as one package.
I would love it if DirectTV let me buy the few channels they have we still watch ala carte for a small fraction of what they are charging for their packages.
There's no hypocrisy at all here. The reason DirecTV won't let you pick individual channels is because their contacts with the channel owners won't let them.
Companies like Viacom know that in order to allow providers like DirecTV to sell a la carte, they would have to price individual channels realistically, and they would get a lot less uptake, and thus advertising dollars (which are based on both actual and possible viewers) would go down. The affected channel list shows just how badly Viacom would lose possible viewers based on a la carte. Of the 17 channels, only about 4 could be considered "general viewership": 1 is gay/lesbian interest, 2 are aimed at African Americans, 4 primarily at children, 6 are music channels (well, maybe not MTV) with several aimed at specific types (Hispanic, country, etc.) of music.