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DirecTV/Viacom Dispute?

433K views 3K replies 511 participants last post by  NewForceFiveFan 
#1 ·
So, I was just flipping through channels and when I stopped on Nick, I happened to see a crawl at the bottom of the screen.

It states:

Attention DirecTV Customers - Call 1-800-531-5000 Now!
Tomorrow Night, DirecTV will drop this and 25 other channels.
You will lose Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, VH1, Spike, TV Land and many more. You can stop them! Call now and demand that DirecTV keep these channels on the air. You must be at least 18 years old to call.

This is the first I've heard about any DirecTV/Viacom dispute and haven't seen the crawl on any other Viacom channels. Also, I would assume that the crawl would have started running prior to the night before.

Any one have any information on this?

Dan
 
#2,227 ·
If DirecTV would drop Viacom permanently we would drop DirecTV. We watch MTV, VH1, Comedy, Spike, Palladia. With a baby on the way, eventually Nick Jr / Nick... In a few years after they grow out of Babyfirst and PBS Sprout.

On the plus side we would get more HD channels on cable like DIY, H2, Style, NASA and a few more. On the negative side we would have to deal with crappy DVRs and the ugly no frills featureless software that runs their system, no MRV, web programming, iPad app, HBOGo, etc.

It's a sucky situation.
 
#2,228 ·
This may have been mentioned previously so my apologies if I am repeating, but someone made an interesting comment on one of the articles on Deadline.com. Wasnt anyone important, it was just a regular Joe commenting on an article but it made a lot of sense.

In short they said that in the beginning this hurt Viacom because they lost the 19+mil customers, but if it goes on too long it is going to hurt Directv a lot more. They mentioned that it looks really bad when a sat/cableco cant even carry the simplest of "cable" channels (MTV, VH1, etc)
 
#2,229 ·
cypherx said:
On the plus side we would get more HD channels on cable like DIY, H2, Style, NASA and a few more. On the negative side we would have to deal with crappy DVRs and the ugly no frills featureless software that runs their system, no MRV, web programming, iPad app, HBOGo, etc.

It's a sucky situation.
Not true. While it costs a bit up front to keep costs down later, you can get Cablecard devices for your computer with 2, 3 or 4 tuners, as well as several verisons of Tivo with up to 2TB/4Tuners with all the multiroom options, and other options in some form, you mentioned.
 
#2,230 ·
tvropro said:
Here's a funny note. Viacom wants more money right? But back in the summer of 2010 refused to sell Showtime to C banders anymore. Many people wanted it still but they refused There was a good chunk of change they lost because they made that stupid move. Now it's coming back to bite them since they are looking for money elsewhere. How stupid are these big companies. Hey Viacom if your listening allow us C banders your Showtime channels again, that way you won't have to resort to what your doing here with Direct.

In the beginning of 2011 HBO pulled the same crap. Watch the next big blowout dispute be with HBO.
C-Band is becoming too small of a player. As I noted earlier, a Google search revealed that in 2005 there were about a 100.000 C-Band users left. A report in 2010 from Motorola on the usage of their 4DTV receiver said 18.000 users had them, but there are other brands.

C-Band is going to be a done deal soon. There is still plenty of FTA to watch using smaller dishes, but the big commercial networks...... I don't think for much longer.

Companies have been pulling networks off of C-Band for years now...

Oh and for those that want a-la-carte, this is what a-la-carte looks like on C-Band:

http://www.programming-center.net/h2h_410.htm

$5.99 for BBC America. Per Month.
$5.99 for BRAVO. Per Month.

And so on for about 20 or so channels..... most of the other stuff is sold in packages.

Yah well.... if you only have a few ten-thousand customers left, it might work for the hold-outs. But I think C-Band as a commercial satellite service is having its nails hammered in its coffin, and it will only be a matter of time before the last nail is hammered in.... and then C-Band will be just a FTA service.
 
#2,231 ·
"Davenlr" said:
Not true. While it costs a bit up front to keep costs down later, you can get Cablecard devices for your computer with 2, 3 or 4 tuners, as well as several verisons of Tivo with up to 2TB/4Tuners with all the multiroom options, and other options in some form, you mentioned.
I hated TiVo with cable.
 
#2,232 ·
zimm7778 said:
I've really been thinking about something. I have no data to back this up but I believe if MTV/VH-1 did what they used to do and show music videos most of the time, they might have more of a shot of getting back on and having not gone dark in the first place. People like music. May not like current pop stuff but they like music. Most young adults that are the crux of those spending $$$ advertisers love grew up with MTV showing videos of the stuff they heard on the radio. We did not grow up with trailer park trash reality tv. Those shows have a stigma attached to them of playing to the lowest common denominator of our society. I don't know what kind of advertisers and ad rates they get, but one would have to imagine it isn't the same level as The Mentalist reruns on TNT. You cannot expect a large chunk of the paying customer base to feel sympathy for them being gone when this is the type of thing these channels (by and large the face of the group along with Nickelodeon) air.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that MTV and CMT has probably gotten better ratings with their reality shows than they did with their music.

lparsons21 said:
Come on! Viacom has children's shows and trash TV for the adults. Yeah, some enjoy trash TV and I have no problem with that, but it certainly isn't worth much in the way of money out of my pocket.
They have other programming as well...

mitchflorida said:
DTV should stick it to Viacom by replacing TVLand with metv or antennatv or something similar. Who would notice? They are the same shows.
TV Land has reruns not found on those channels, and that doesn't even account for TV Land's five original scripted programs.

~Alan
 
#2,233 ·
Davenlr said:
Not true. While it costs a bit up front to keep costs down later, you can get Cablecard devices for your computer with 2, 3 or 4 tuners, as well as several verisons of Tivo with up to 2TB/4Tuners with all the multiroom options, and other options in some form, you mentioned.
Yeah, with TiVo's going for pricetag of $149 a piece minimum ($299 I think if you want the good one, and $399 for the 4 tuner one) plus a monthly subscription of $14.95 PER Tivo. (Plus the cable company charges you anywhere from $5 t $10 per cable card).

And you would still have to get cable boxes for your other TV's, if you want Tivo's for all it is going to get a very expensive ordeal.

Additionally, cablecard is a ONE-way service, and you cannot use VOD services or P2P services through them.

So there are disadvantages. Plus no multi-room DVR setup, the cable boxes you get for other TV's won't be able to access the content on the TiVo.

From a financial point of view, you are probably better off with the crappy cable boxes from the cable company, as they are issued for free and for a monthly fee that is much lower than TiVo and Cablecard combined.
 
#2,234 ·
maartena said:
Additionally, cablecard is a ONE-way service, and you cannot use VOD services or P2P services through them.
Yep, if you want NEW Tivo's, its pretty expensive up front. The monthly charges for the second and additional ones are cheaper though. Comcast only charges me $2.50 for the first cablecard, and $1.50 for the second Tivo. I have lifetime on mine, so dont have to worry about monthly charges to Tivo. Payoff is around 2-2 1/2 years. You still pay DirecTv for each box as well, with no option for lifetime.

Comcast is rolling out VOD services on the Tivo this year. Dont know how they are doing it.
There is multiroom viewing, but its a copy not streaming. Plus side there is you can copy any show you want to keep to your computer and store it on the hard drive or burn it to a DVD. No loss of programming if the DVR bites the dust.

While I dont use them, Ive been told the new Comcast DVRs will do MRV. Cant say for sure.
 
#2,235 ·
maartena said:
From a financial point of view, you are probably better off with the crappy cable boxes from the cable company, as they are issued for free and for a monthly fee that is much lower than TiVo and Cablecard combined.
Agree! I researched Tivo option when I had cable, and it would have never worked out to be cost effective.
 
#2,236 ·
Alan Gordon said:
I could be wrong, but I suspect that MTV and CMT has probably gotten better ratings with their reality shows than they did with their music.
I might challenge that but I dont think we'll ever know for sure. MTV didnt "report" to The Neilsens until 1994. Even still, TV was different back then. It wasnt uncommon at all for a show to get 30+ million viewers. Hell even Alf was hitting 20+ million. I could see a music video eclipsing Jersey Shore's 7-8mil viewers.

Again, I am not sure we'd ever know for sure.
 
#2,237 ·
lokar said:
To anyone saying a la carte would be too complicated for D* to implement, that's ridiculous! C-band had a la carte for years and Canada has had a limited form of a la carte for years where you have a cheap base package and then add themed groups of 5-7 channels for around $6 each after that. I don't even care about any Viacom channels but I'm 100% for a la carte! The first provider with the guts to offer this will do very well, they will at least get my business.
It wouldn't be impossible, just very costly to DirecTV which they would pass onto the customer. It is easy to assign a group of stations to a receiver, but picking them out assigning them one at a time is a lot more costly.
 
#2,238 ·
"Beerstalker" said:
If people want just music then that is what Palladia, CMT Pure Country, VH1 Soul, VH1 Classic, MTV Jams, and MTV Hits are for. Those channels play music videos/concert photage nearly 24/7. Contrary to what people say MTV has not given up totally on music, they have just spun it off onto different channels based on genre. It's too bad those channels don't get upgraded to HD and have wider distribution, I think it might help MTV beat the stigma that they don't care about music.

As far as ratings go look at the ratings for them compared to MTV and VH1 and then tell me if you still think that what the people really want is music.
Since every channel you just named is either not available or on much higher tiers I wouldn't compare ratings between the two. I also didn't point to ratings in my post. I pointed to the stigma of MTV programming and whether the adults paying the bills really care if it's available as Viacom isn't getting nearly the groundswell of support Fox did earlier this year. All of this "MTV does care about music" is irrelevant to the discussion. Directv has all of 1 of those channels and it's in HD Extra. So, the others don't figure into the equation.
 
#2,239 ·
"Alan Gordon" said:
I could be wrong, but I suspect that MTV and CMT has probably gotten better ratings with their reality shows than they did with their music.

They have other programming as well...

TV Land has reruns not found on those channels, and that doesn't even account for TV Land's five original scripted programs.

~Alan
Again, never said a word about ratings.
 
#2,241 ·
Draconis said:
Nickelodeon ratings tumble from loss of carriage on DirecTV.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-nickratings-20120716,0,1495882.story

Could not have happened to a nicer company.
So which is it? Are Viacom channels are so worthless, crappy and over-priced that DirecTV doesn't need them to ever return and shouldn't pay 2 cents to get them back? Or are so many DirecTV customers regularly and habitually watching these channels that loss of this single provider's customer base can cause a channel's ratings to plummet?

Can't have it both ways.
 
#2,242 ·
maartena said:
C-Band is becoming too small of a player. As I noted earlier, a Google search revealed that in 2005 there were about a 100.000 C-Band users left. A report in 2010 from Motorola on the usage of their 4DTV receiver said 18.000 users had them, but there are other brands.

C-Band is going to be a done deal soon. There is still plenty of FTA to watch using smaller dishes, but the big commercial networks...... I don't think for much longer.

Companies have been pulling networks off of C-Band for years now...

Oh and for those that want a-la-carte, this is what a-la-carte looks like on C-Band:

http://www.programming-center.net/h2h_410.htm

$5.99 for BBC America. Per Month.
$5.99 for BRAVO. Per Month.

And so on for about 20 or so channels..... most of the other stuff is sold in packages.

Yah well.... if you only have a few ten-thousand customers left, it might work for the hold-outs. But I think C-Band as a commercial satellite service is having its nails hammered in its coffin, and it will only be a matter of time before the last nail is hammered in.... and then C-Band will be just a FTA service.
C band has a few things up it's sleeve that hasn't been released to the public yet. It may surprise some in the future.

Getting back to DirecTv why can't Direct look at the alacarte model of C band and expand upon it for itself. Thats what we want from Direct don't we? We want to watch the tv channels we want at a fair price. How many actually watch more than maybe 10 or 20 in a package at the most. Let the consumer tailor the channels to their watching needs. If the programmers loose some of those junk channels because of ala cart or mini packs so what. It makes more sense to get good programming for your buck than some of that mindless crap on those subpar channels.
 
#2,243 ·
#2,245 ·
"susanandmark" said:
So which is it? Are Viacom channels are so worthless, crappy and over-priced that DirecTV doesn't need them to ever return and shouldn't pay 2 cents to get them back? Or are so many DirecTV customers regularly and habitually watching these channels that loss of this single provider's customer base can cause a channel's ratings to plummet?

Can't have it both ways.
20 million households are still 20 million households. That is a large percentage of TV households and will have an impact no matter if the ratings are high or low.

Add: Nielsen says there are just under 115 million households. Directv is in 20 million. Or 17% of them. Of course, some have two services but directv still represents about 15% of all households. Assuming something linear among providers, it would mean the Viacom ratings would dip about 15%.
 
#2,246 ·
We are a 4 person household with 2 HD DVRs and 2 HD receivers. I can honestly say that in the past year nobody has watched Palladia, Centric, Tr3s, CMT, Logo, VH1 Classic, TeenNick, Nick Jr., Spike, BET, VH1, TV Land or Comedy Central.

If we lose the Viacom channels so be it, just don't raise our bill!!! Personally I would think it would be great if we could only pay for the channels we actually watch.
 
#2,247 ·
A disclaimer before I begin here: I do not watch any of the channels impacted nor do we have any children. We do not miss any of the channels, but fully understand those who do and hopefully this will be resolved soon.

With that being said, one of the quirks of this blackout is for certain hotels that use DirecTV as their provider. I travel frequently for business and lately I've been traveling to spots not too far from Philly. At the hotel I'm staying at this week, they have a grand total of 28 channels (which is this day and time is a ridiculously low number as most hotels I stay at have 50 or more channels). Of those 28, 3 are Viacom channels (Nick, MTV, and Comedy Central). That's 11% of the channels offered at this hotel. Not that I'm going to watch those channels, since that's not really a destination for me, but it leaves us with 25 viewable channels here.

I'm sure there are parents at this and other hotels that use D* having to explain to their kids why they can't watch Nick or MTV.
 
#2,248 ·
AMike said:
A disclaimer before I begin here: I do not watch any of the channels impacted nor do we have any children. We do not miss any of the channels, but fully understand those who do and hopefully this will be resolved soon.

With that being said, one of the quirks of this blackout is for certain hotels that use DirecTV as their provider. I travel frequently for business and lately I've been traveling to spots not too far from Philly. At the hotel I'm staying at this week, they have a grand total of 28 channels (which is this day and time is a ridiculously low number as most hotels I stay at have 50 or more channels). Of those 28, 3 are Viacom channels (Nick, MTV, and Comedy Central). That's 11% of the channels offered at this hotel. Not that I'm going to watch those channels, since that's not really a destination for me, but it leaves us with 25 viewable channels here.

I'm sure there are parents at this and other hotels that use D* having to explain to their kids why they can't watch Nick or MTV.
Hears a old tick I used in the past look for hotels have cable / list we have 40/50+ channels (with the end of analog cable does work that well any more)

Now we need more places with the directv residential experience.
 
#2,251 ·
susanandmark said:
So which is it? Are Viacom channels are so worthless, crappy and over-priced that DirecTV doesn't need them to ever return and shouldn't pay 2 cents to get them back? Or are so many DirecTV customers regularly and habitually watching these channels that loss of this single provider's customer base can cause a channel's ratings to plummet?

Can't have it both ways.
Sure you can. Viacom claims that 20% of DirecTV viewers watch their channels. That is a minority of the DirecTV customers, but it represents a large part of the Viacom viewership. so it does work both ways. DirecTV does not need Viacom, but Viacom needs DirecTV. The dispute will be resolved eventually, but there no reason for DirecTV to rush.
 
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