The clock ticks and the dispute between Time Warner Cable and Viacom over increased fees shows no signs of resolving by midnight. Viacom has threatened to pull Comedy Central, MTV and 17 other channels on Thursday.

So, what is Viacom really asking for? It wants more money from Time Warner — approximately 23 cents more per subscriber each month.  Multiply that with Time Warner’s 13 million subscribers (not all are affected) and the total comes out to an extra $35.9 million a year. 

That’s 12 percent increase, which means that Time Warner is already paying Viacom $299 million a year, or $23 per subscriber a year. Essentially, the minimal effect on a customer’s bill is $1.92 per month — or $2.05 if Viacom gets the increase.

If Viacom does pull its channels tonight, I wonder if it will refund Time Warner any bit of the $299 million, which comes out to about $819,178 a day. And then there’s the issue of advertising. This will certainly upset all the advertisers who paid to run commercials in front of millions of Time Warner subscribers.

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.

Whether or not Time Warner is sincerely looking out for its customers, as it claims, is arguable.

But a reason why the Time Warner customers don’t get the NFL network is the NFL wants at least $0.70 per subscriber and to make it available to all cable customers — not just those who pay extra for a sports tier, at least in this 2006 story by Multichannel News. Time Warner has balked at this request, saying that if it offered the NFL Network to all customers it would have to raise rates. That saga continues.

As of 6 p.m. New Year’s Eve, the Viacom-Time Warner dispute shows no signs of resolving. 

As a Time Warner customer myself, what I want to know is if Viacom pulls its 19 channels, will I get my $1.92/month reimbursed?

Earlier: 

• No Dora, SpongeBob or Jon Stewart? AT&T U-verse has ‘em (Dec. 31, 2008)
• Time Warner Cable may lose Jon Stewart, MTV, more (Dec. 30, 2008)
• 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)

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