A financial spat between DIRECTTV and Viacom meant that the satellite provider’s customers woke up Wednesday morning without Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, VH1, CMT, Spike TV, TV Land and several other Viacom owned networks after they went dark at midnight Tuesday.
Check out what The News Gerald reported yesterday:
A financial spat between DIRECTTV and Viacom meant that the satellite provider’s customers woke up this morning without the company of Jon Stewart, Snooki, Dora the Explorer and Spongebob.
Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, VH1, CMT, Spike TV, TV Land and several other Viacom owned networks went dark at midnight Tuesday on DIRECTTV.
“DIRECTTV is throwing around some big numbers that are misleading. Here’s the truth: Viacom is asking DirecTV for an increase of a couple of pennies per day per subscriber. That’s far less than DirecTV pays other programmers with fewer viewers than Viacom,” Viacom officials wrote on the company’s blog. “Viacom has always been open to negotiating and hopes to get a deal done.”
DIRECTV says they too are willing to make a deal.
“We have been very willing to get a deal done, but Viacom is pushing DIRECTV customers to pay more than a 30 percent increase, which equates to an extra $1 billion, despite the fact that the ratings for many of their main networks have plummeted and much of Viacom’s programming can be seen for free online,” DIRECTV officials wrote in a news release. “Viacom sent us a letter last night that outlined our obligations to remove the channels by midnight or face legal action just as they were falsely telling viewers DIRECTV was responsible. Let’s be clear, Viacom took these channels away from DIRECTV viewers.”
Local DIRECTTV customers spoke out about the issue on The News Herald’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
“It needs to come back on before I cancel my service!,” wrote Kristen Campbell.
Tawna Gean Helums wrote that she was angry over the move.
“Why two companies can’t get there crap together is ridiculous,” she wrote. “They would rather lose customers than try and make an agreement.”
DIRECTTV is also suggesting that Viacom stop bundling channels and allow customers to pick which networks they want and which ones they don’t.
“We have absolutely no problem compensating Viacom fairly, but they have now knowingly put our customers in the unreasonable position of either accepting their extravagant financial demands or losing some of their favorite TV shows,” the news release states. “We feel our customers should not have to pay more for these networks than the customers of any other TV provider. We reiterated this to Viacom today and have not heard back from them.”
Customers can also see full-length Viacom episodes for free by going to http://www.directvpromise.com and clicking on the ‘Other Ways to Watch’ tab.”
Several customers said they would switch to Dish Network because of the issue. Dish Network recently shut off AMC, home of the Walking Dead, Mad Men and Breaking Bad over a contractual dispute.
Look Direct TV and Viacom…you better find a way to fix this before we find our way to the bootleg man! We knew we had to keep his number on deck for when y’all started to act up! That next bill better have a fat discount too!
