**UPDATE: Dec. 31, 10 p.m.: Blackout averted. Time Warner Cable and Viacom reach deal
**UPDATE, Dec. 31, 6 p.m.** Still no resolution. A look at the math behind the Viacom/Time Warner dispute: “If MTV goes dark at midnight, will Viacom offer $819,178 refund?”
**UPDATE, Dec. 31, 11:21 a.m.** Time Warner just issued a new statement calling Viacom’s tactics extortion. Looks like the two companies aren’t anywhere close to resolving this issue and anyone watching tonight’s Miley Cyrus’ New Year’s Eve special on MTV will see a dark screen after midnight. Read the full memo from the cable company’s CEO.
**UPDATE, Dec. 31, 10:32 a.m.** Bloomberg News is reporting that Viacom rejected Time Warner Cable’s request to extend discussions after January 1. Story also mentions that in total, Viacom is asking for a 15 percent increase in fees.
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Cable TV ain’t cheap. And if the owner of Comedy Central, MTV and 17 other channels doesn’t get more, it will stop broadcasting those channels to Time Warner Cable customers on January 1. If the two companies don’t resolve the issue, their viewers will ring in the new year staring at a blank screen.
Viacom Inc. is asking for 25 cents more per month per Time Warner subscriber, which the company says is less than one penny a day per subscriber (the Associated Press reports the per-subscriber fees come out to 23 cents more a month). If an agreement on what is known as “carriage fees” is not made by midnight Wednesday, Viacom will pull those channels.
Do we really want our MTV?
”I really hope they don’t pull them but what they are asking for is outrageous,” Fred Stefany, Time Warner Cable’s president of Los Angeles South and Orange County, said in an e-mail to me Wednesday morning.
In a statement late Tuesday, Viacom socks it to Time Warner in an attempt to win consumer sympathy. It mentions the upcoming cable TV price hike that Time Warner customers in Orange County will feel in 2009.
“Time Warner Cable subscribers who are being handed a January 1st $3 monthly increase in Raleigh, Orange County, Los Angeles, and New York City are simultaneously facing the removal of beloved shows across 19 channels.”
Viacom, which started to appeal to viewers and fans online and on TV Tuesday night, goes on to say that Time Warner “has so greatly undervalued our channels for so long” and that the increased fees are “reasonable and modest relative to the profits TWC enjoys from our networks.”
(For the first nine months this year, Time Warner reported a 3 percent increase in video subscriber revenuesto $7.9 billion, compared to same period last year. Viacom, meanwhile, reported $6.3 billion in revenues from its ‘media networks,’ which was an 11percent increase from the prior year. Viacom’s media networks include cable channels and the ‘Rock Band’ game franchise, but not its films. )
Update 12/31: In a statement just before noon on Wednesday, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt called Viacom’s tactics extortion and rejected the notion that this is just a few pennies per customer. In a lengthy retort, Britt says Viacom wants an extra $39 million a year, which is on top of the “hundreds of millions of dollars our customers already pay to Viacom each year. That doesn’t sound like pennies to us,” Britt said.
“The issue is that they have asked for an exorbitant increase in their carriage fees and their network ratings are sagging,” Alex Dudley, a vice president at Time Warner Cable, told the Associated Press. ”Basically we’re trying to hold the line for our customer.”
Dudley also said that part of the disagreement is that Viacom offers its popular shows online as reruns and revenue made online isn’t shared with Time Warner.
The channels that would be affected are Comedy Central, CMT: Pure Country, Logo, Palladia, MTV, MTV 2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, MTV Tr3s, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Nick 2, Nicktoons, Spike, The N, TV Land, VH1, VH1 Classic, and VH1 Soul. If those channels go dark, 13 million subscribers will be cut off, according to the Associated Press story.
Earlier, Fred Stefany, Time Warner’s division president for Orange County and Los Angeles South, responded to readers explaining why the cable company must raise its prices next month. He mentioned that video service is going up because every sports network and “free” TV network (CBS, ABC, NBC, etc.) are demanding more money. Looks like those networks aren’t the only ones.
Added Dec. 31, 11:20 a.m.** Statement from Glenn Britt, President & CEO, Time Warner Cable
Christmas is over, but Viacom is still playing Scrooge, threatening to pull its MTV Networks off of Time Warner Cable at midnight tonight unless we ask our customers to pay exorbitant price increases.
Viacom claims their demands equate to “pennies,” but that is misleading and insulting to our customers, from whom Viacom is trying to extort another $39 million annually – on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars our customers already pay to Viacom each year. That doesn’t sound like pennies to us. Demanding that our customers pay so much more for these few networks would be unreasonable in any economy, but it is particularly outrageous given the current economic conditions.
We sympathize with the fact that Viacom’s advertising business is suffering and that their networks’ ratings have largely been declining. However, we can’t abide their attempt to make up their lost revenue on the backs of Time Warner Cable customers. We’ve negotiated in good faith and made several concessions to help reach a fair and reasonable deal. We’ve asked for an extension of the current contract while we continue to negotiate. But Viacom doesn’t appear to be interested in what’s fair and reasonable for American consumers – they’re only interested in propping up their sagging bottom line, and they are poised to pull their networks from Time Warner Cable customers tonight.
Huge price increases like what Viacom is demanding threaten the ultimate value of cable TV. Time Warner Cable is a retail distributor of products we purchase wholesale. Wholesale programming costs are rising dramatically every year, and, like all multichannel distributors, we have to pass on at least a portion of the increases to our customers. Viacom’s MTV Networks are just a few of the hundreds of channels we carry. If every channel demanded huge, double-digit increases like what Viacom is trying to force our customers to pay, it would be impossible to keep the price of cable reasonable for our customers.
Time Warner Cable has reached hundreds of distribution agreements with other networks. In fact, we currently have deals with every other cable programmer. The negotiations aren’t always easy, but we work hard to reach agreements that are fair to our customers and to both businesses.
We hope Viacom won’t pull the MTV Networks from Time Warner Cable customers, and we’ll negotiate up to the last possible minute and beyond. But ultimately, it is Viacom’s decision. We implore them to join with us to reach a fair resolution or grant an extension, and we hope they won’t carry through with their threat to take their networks away from our customers tonight.
Other views:
- Viacom Channels May Go Dark In Time Warner License Dispute (Broadcasting & Cable)
- Viacom May Pull Channels Off Time Warner Cable in Contract Spat (Bloomberg)
- Viacom, Time Warner Cable face midnight deadline (LA Times)
- Statement from Viacom (Viacom)
Recent Time Warner Cable stories:
- What has Time Warner Cable done for you lately? (Dec. 30, 2008)
- Time Warner Cable raising prices in 2009 (Dec. 29, 2008)
- Time Warner Cable ‘adopts’ O.C. families (Dec. 24, 2008)
- Time Warner’s O.C. phone outage felt in Hawaii (Dec. 23, 2008)
- The weekly Time Warner Cable status report (Dec. 22, 2008)
- Is Time Warner Cable’s Internet outage really fixed? (Dec. 16, 2008)
- Time Warner Cable Internet outage fixed (Dec. 11, 2008)
- Feds to look closely at cable TV firms pricing, channel changes
- Time Warner’s new HD channels and why Costa Mesa, Tustin get them first
- Time Warner Cable’s new features finally coming to O.C.
- Time Warner still cleaning up cable merger mess in O.C.
- How to get cheaper cable TV from Time Warner Cable
- How to get cheaper cable TV in O.C., part 2
Tamara 'the Gadgetress' Chuang
Time Warner will tell you that when you subscribe to different packages you will get all kinds of programs and channels. Well many of those programs are duplicated two and three times on other channels. TWC get rid of the duplicates and put ALL of the none english in it’s own package and not in the basic package. Stop adding a couple good channels to a crappy package.
Why don’t you all turn this into a life lesson and teach your kids that just like Viacom, you can’t always get what you want? So your kid can’t see some show for a couple days, big deal! Why don’t you engage in parenting and family time with your kids instead of propping them in front of the TV.
Quite frankly, the main reason I got cable was so that my son can enjoy his favorite channel Noggin..so, if that is going to be taken away along with Nickelodean, I say, what’s the point of keeping it??? Why should we, as consumers, suffer because two companies can’t get along or because one feels the need to be greedy? I wish a representative from one of their big companies can try to explain to my six year old why he won’t be able to watch Noggin anymore…
is anyone really surprised by this….keep on pinching the consumer. Hopefully people with just do away with Time Warner and find an alternative provider, its the only way to stop getting pushed around.
http://localorange.com
Which is better, Direct TV or DISH? Prices, service, etc….
Direct Tv Here I come!! Just got my pennysaver today there’s always Direct Tv ads in there, and im making the switch! TWC is out!
Folks, TWC is a monopoly, just like all the other cable companies out there (thank you City of Orange…)
Customer satisfaction is not even on thier corporate To-Do List, they don’t care what we think. Why else would they do this or give us 20 Spanish speaking stations or if you havn’t noticed, run a Time Warner Cable commercial every 10 minutes telling us how great thier cable service is or asking us to try thier phone service..No thank you, going to contact the Dish people next Monday.
Typical for tw. They wont carry NFL network, almost lost all their customers in the midwest market over the Big Ten network that they refused to carry.They just dont get it or care. Take it from me switch to Dish Network or Direct TV(I have Dish), you will get better service, better picture and more options of what you want to watch. TW can stuff their service up their…well you know what. Happy New Year All!
my daughter cried when she turn on the tv this morning and read about time warner taking off Nick She watches ICARLY all the time. Please for the sake of all little girls that have TimeWarner Please do not take remove the channels
i have been trying to call the number posted and all i get is a busy signal.
Which is better, Direct TV or DISH? Please advise.
Oh my goodness, I can not believe they are willing to take away Nickelodeon from kids and teens like me. The shows on Nick is so loved that children will be sad if they take it away. Nick has BETTER shows than Disney and to the kids or teens that hate the shows from Disney and watch Nick, this is shocking news. This is just ridiculous coming from the two so-called “BIGGEST” companies
HEY VIACOM AND TIME WARNER, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND THINK ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMERS THAT ARE REALLY PAYING THE PRICE TO KEEP YOUR COMPANIES ALIVE IS THIS BAD ECONOMY!
When considering DirecTV, keep this in mind. Their customer service is only slightly better than cable. I had an outage for a week due to a dish problem and they wanted to charge me to come to my house. Only after arguing, was the service call for free. Also, channels like Food, Discovery, History etc, are all east coast feeds so when a show is advertised as being on at 9PM, it may not be. Also channel changes are slow, 1 to 2 seconds, so surfing is slow. If you watch HBO, they don’t carry HBO Comedy. When all is said and done, DirectTV is better than TWC but I am considering ATT’s U-verse.
lol
time warner sucks…this isn’t viacom’s fault.
We hung in there when TWC bought out Adelphia. More money, lost channels and lousy picture quality. If I wanted certain channels back it entailed very costly upgrades.
No more. They are raising our rates, giving us less channels and they think i’m going to stand by and continue to put money in their pocket? Friends of ours pay less for more with satellite.
Been considering satellite tv for some time. Looks like the time is now.
TWC just lost another customer. This is one of the worst companies i’ve dealt with.
Down with Viacom! They are acting like snotty kids who aren’t getting whatever they want. Now that get loud and complain in public. Sure hope their actions backfire and they get dropped!!
They need to stop bundling all those channels together. It’s just a way to extort money so you can watch maybe one channel out ot the bunch. I’d say 70 % of the channels I had I didn’t watch, but I was stuck because there’s one or two channel in a particular lineup that I did watch. The only thing I could do was fork over the cash or cancel.
I could’ve saved hundreds a year if I could buy only the channels I want, but the cable companies won’t give that up. So, I actually just cancelled my cable except for basic. I get like 2-13 now and that’s it. These companies don’t care about the customers. All they want is the money.
Time Warner and the other cable providers need to understand that the time is now, that they need to provide customized channel deliveries to their customers.
There’s really only a dozen channels I would watch on either cable or satellite. And if it isn’t soon on cable, DirecTv will be my choice.
So if Vicome goes through with a black out they lose advertising revenue. If TWC goes through with it they lose customers. So this really is a no win situation here. They both need to sit down, figure out who is going to lose the most money, and that company needs to give in.
this is bull…whos not willing to pay a quarter more per month? im sure time warner customers wont mind, i sure dont.
NOGGIN IS THE ONLY DECENT CHANNEL FOR MY LITTLE ONE. I DO NOT NEED CABLE IF THEY TAKE THAT CHANEL AWAY. I SEE DISH NETWORK IN MY FUTURE.
HOW MUCH MORE OF A PROFIT DO THEY NEED?
none of viacom shows are “beloved” in my household. Sometimes we watch the Daily Show but, like TW said you can find it on the net. Viacom will also block TWC customers from its web site too. However, I think you can get around it by going to hulu.com. It worked last night. On Comedy Central’s web site the warning notice popped up. I mostly watch sports and news so bye bye Viacom. I’m sure the two will soon reach an agreement. They both need each other.
Please call TW and demand they keep your MTV! Our livelihood is at stake! If not for ‘Spiedi’ - do it for Justin Bobby!
Call TODAY!
Call 1-888-722-5927 and switch to U-verse..I cancelled TWC and it’s the best thing I did. They can have their old technology receiver back. They will be begging for customers next year. So much for the price increase. They lost me as a customer!
I don’t watch any of those channels. Let thme go dark.
Sucks for TW people, but why is it flashing on my Verizon FiOS?
“Alert! Alert! Alert! You wil lose Nickleodean along with 18 other channels. Time Warner Customers may call 800-362-3786 to request nick”
and
“MTV, Nick, Noggin, VH1, Comedy Central, TV Land will be taken out of the Time Warner and Bright House Cable networks line up starting tonight”
Time Warner’s price is already high as it is. Even the phone is pricy, considering “Magic Jack” is much, much cheaper. And recently, the internet was “screwed up” due to what Time Warner referred to as “expansion.”
I don’t care for those Viacom channels. PLEASE CANCEL VIACOM!
How much in bonuses was paid within Viacom and TWC????? Viacom is certainly foolish asking for a large increase in these economic times but Time Warner Cable is also poor on customer service. Every company needs to keep all their customers happy in this economy
AS a mom all I can say is that the ONLY children channels worth watching are Nick, Nick Jr. & Noggin. IF these channels go dark there is nothing left that I will allow my children to watch except maybe Sesame Street & Word Girl. If Time Warner doesn’t fix things soon, with out raising our rates even more, we will be shutting it off and going sattlelight.
So let me get this straight, TW is raising our rates and giving us less channels……as if I needed another reason to despise them……Where is that flyer for Direct TV????
Time Warner sucks, what more can I say?
I got an email not long after I read this article asking me to call TWC and tell them not to lose those channels. I called, got a recording saying it’s all being handled, but I pushed the buttons to talk to a rep anyway and asked him if they will lower my bill if I lose these channels. He told me not to worry, they are still in talks and he doubts they will pull the channels, but to feel free to call back if they do.
This is so typical… Two massive businesses that make money hand-over-fist are at each other’s throats in a contractual dispute because they want to make even more money, but guess who is going to end up paying for it in the long run…. Yep…. You’re right. You and me. The economy is in shambles and big biz will squabble over every penny, and Joe consumer ends up getting screwed in the long run. My TWC bill is already 180 bucks per month!!!! This is crazy.
This sucks. Noggin is great for kids. I wonder if the
Wonder Pets can save us now.
I want to get rid of all the spanish speaking channels.I have 15 of them! Even better I think I will get rid of TWC.
I don’t watch MTV or Comedy Centeral or many others on the list.. You think with the technology that is around that the customer could costomize the channels that are recieved in the home anyway and not pay for unwanted channels. TWC needs to start letting the customer choose the channels and pay accordingly. I would go just about anywhere else for cable if I didn’t live in an apartment and could do satalitte tv. There are many channels that I would rather have than the golf channel or other stupid cnannels that I am forced to have.
I love TV Land. MTV I can do without. I am thankful Lifetime channel is not included. Love that channel!! Oh, I like VH1, too…
I agree with ratpen! I hate MTV now. There is nothing but stupid shows. TWC needs to let us pick withc channels to pay for. Out of over 600 I only watch a handful. Why should I pay for the rest? Why should I pay for all the spanish, russian, and various asian language channels?
The Viacom demands do seem exorbitant, even in this crazy economy. Rate increases over 20% are quite unusual and is heavy-handed. It is a bit ridiculous for Time Warner to say that they are looking out for the customers though as they have the poorest customer service around. The have unreliable internet connections and outdated DVR boxes and such. They care so much about their customers, they removed the network status button from their website so customers can’t even see for themselves when there are network issues. Try calling them on the phone to check about issues, it’s a big joke and waste of time. So, Time Warner executives, please don’t try and fool anyone saying you care about customers. Just tell it like it is, that it eats at your own profits, as this is the only topic that your company cares about. It’s certainly not making your customers happy. You wouldn’t know the term client-centered service if it bit you.
22% increase when all they show are the Hills over and over again…how can they ask for 22% more in this economy…i dont see more or better content
With 2 kids, all I ever watch at home is Nick, NickToons, Nick2, or Noggin. My kids will be sad, but I guess they will get over it. I think they will especially miss Noggin… Maybe I won’t, but I think they will.
Why am I having a hard time believing MTV networks is at fault here? And hasn’t Spongebob been in the top 10 in the Nielsens for years? I can maybe believe sagging ratings for MTV, but for the kids channels?
Another reason to cacel your service. I put up an antenna and the picture is even better than with cable.
I have two words for Time Warner Cable,……Direct TV!
I don’t watch MTV, why should I pay for it? Same for any non-english language channel, any shopping network, the list is endless. I pay for 250 channels, I don’t ever even tune in to 80% of them, I want a rebate!