Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Goddammit, there's a new Futurama on tonight! :mad:

That's about all I watch on Viacom's crappy channels. Although my son watches a lot of Nick stuff. Luckily we have a bunch on the DVR, plus Netflix has some.

I know DirecTV's never completely innocent in these battles, but Viacom wanting an extra $1 billion for their shitty programming seems a bit absurd...

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

I have no horse in this race as I happily dumped satellite years ago and went strictly OTA and Netflix.

I hope this gets worked out soon, but those claiming that a la carte is the answer better get ready for about 10 channels on cable and that's it. Niche programming would disappear overnight. You'd have the big channels available and that's it. So hopefully you like Nickelodeon, MTV, USA and ESPN. Even things like the Food Network might not be able to sustain itself under that model.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Are these Attack of the Show recordings from years ago when G4 was still on Directv?

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Funny thing is one of the networks, can't even remember which, several years ago in my area were off the air on cable due to a disagreement..this lasted months I think, and Dish got thousands of customers here to switch over(DirecTV still doesn't have locals here but I get them from the next closest market)..then that happened with Dish to piss people off again. My parents switched to Dish and aren't happy right now with the AMC fiasco.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

+1

It would literally cripple the cable industry. Hundreds of channels would go out of business. I work for what I pretty much consider a niche sports channel, NFL Network, and during the offseason, all we show is NFL Total Access, Old Games, and Old NFL Films shows. When the season starts, the network fortunately has Thursday Night Football from September to December as it's selling point. The average sports fan, who only cares about Live games and not news shows like Total Access probably wouldn't pay for NFL Network a la carte if there were no games. I and hundreds of others would be out of a job.

Other niche sports channels like NBA TV, NHL Network, MLB Network wouldn't be able to sustain themselves a la carte during the offseason when there are no live games to keep fans interested. The news and magazine shows and old games wouldn't be enough to get someone to pay for it alone if it was stuck in the a la carte model.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

You might think it's shitty programming, but Viacom has 8 channels in the top 30.

Here is a good look at the battle between Viacom and DirectTv:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...arriage-347977.

Apparently Viacom gets 3$ per user for its channels. DirecTV was paying 2.50, and the contract just ended.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

NFL Network runs in my house year round, there is no off-season :). Love all the programming on there.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

It depends on the model/date of the DVR - older ones and/or TIVOs should keep everything intact, newer, DirecTV brand ones are more likely to block out the content you've recorded from channels they no longer carry.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

OK, so looking at the various linked articles someone's lying. Viacom says all they want is a couple of cents per subscriber per day. So 20M subscribers x $.02 x 365= $146M. But DTV says its $1B that Viacom is asking for. That's a huge gap between the 2 amounts. Were it closer then its just looking at math but this far apart someone is not telling the truth.

For me I have UVerse so I expect the Network greed to work its way around to us at some point.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Yes. They are six episodes including the last few before DirecTV removed them from the air. I also still have the Olivia '09: The Munn-der Years special on the DVR.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

I disagree. Channels like HBO and Showtime basically exist in an a la carte model and they put out some of the best programming on TV.

Besides if the consumer isn't willing to financially suppport a channel does it really deserve to exist in a capitalist economy?

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Is it "a couple of cents" or "two cents?" A "couple of cents" isn't necessarily a hard number. Viacom could also be figuring growth into their figures, too. Or attaching fees, or a large single payment in addition to the per-subscriber rates.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

yeah, it seems like if its a channel no one watches, why should it remain?

smaller audience shows could move to the internet if there was enough interest. Channels could turn into apps like on a smart phone/tablet. You pay 5-10 bucks a month and your get an apps like "HBO" that streams live feeds to your tv and gives you access to the past episodes. some might end up being like $15 a month and some like a buck a month

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Agreed. I don't like paying the ESPN tax, for example.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Same here. I don't use ESPN at all. I'd happily pay $5 a month each for the MLB and NHL networks.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

They could but I suspect much of this 'niche' programming that is mentioned is little more than filler almost nobody watches to justify all these channels.

If people paid for exactly what we wanted I have hope we'd see fewer stations but more stellar ones like HBO and Showtime making excellent programming.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Funny you mention that - it's the sports channel tax (and the christian channels) which were factors in canning cable along with bundled channels etc.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Directv posted another note. They are giving away all 8 Encore movie channels to all customers for free until July 31st to compensate for this.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

I could have swore that when I first read one of the links in the OP this morning, it said "a few cents." I remember thinking to myself, "ok, do they mean 3 or 7?" Now I looked and it says a couple cents.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

The religious channels (like the shopping channels) pay DTV to carry them.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

That's why I excluded them from my "sports tax" statement by making it an after thought.

Still they were forced on me and my old cable co didn't even give me an option to block them so that added to my decision.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Great. 8 more channels that suck.

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Viacom pulls free episodes of Colbert and Daily Show.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...ws+%26+Buzz%29

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

I would be more than happy to pay for an a la carte channel system if my cable system offered one. Even at $5 a channel, I only watch 10 or so channels of the 300+ I get now, so I'd be saving a bunch. Unfortunately, the channels I watch are spread among all the tiers of the cable system, so I have to get them all in order to receive the few channels I watch.

And yes, I do realize that if some channels could not support themselves without being bundled in with other channels, but if they can't support themselves, maybe they just shouldn't exist. Isn't that what capitalism is all about?

-jason

Re: DirecTV to drop 26 Viacom Channels at 7/10 Midnight
 

Stay classy Viacon! I'll keep this in mind when considering buying other product from your company.