miscDude
join:2005-03-24
Hendersonville, NC | reply to Barb2331
Re: Message... said by Barb2331 :I checked with Time warmer and yes we are loosing 18 channels due to a .25 cent per paying consumer..This will suck!  Keep in mind that this is .25 per paying customer per month.... for channels that most of them hardly get any real viewship. (Who's really going to miss mtv5?)
There's also the fact that if TWC folds to their demands, it sets a bad precident. "ok, .25 cents more isn't a good deal for our customers considering what they are already paying for these stations, but we don't want to lose these channels, so we'll pay it." Then the contract runs out on another big carrier's packages, like ABC/Disney, who see how easily Viacom got what they wanted, so they raise their rates by $1. Then Viacom comes up for renewal again and they say, "We got what we wanted last time by threating to pull the stations, so we want another $1.30 per customer, or else!"
The line has to be drawn someplace, and notice how even Viacom's statement doesn't say how much they are really asking for. They say maybe 22-35% more than what they are getting now... but is it a contract that has an annual increase of that percentage built in? or a 1 year contract that will have them asking for the same percentage increase next year? Even what you pay the MSO only tends to go up by 2-3%, yet Viacom appears to be going for a much larger percentage in their increase... obviously they are going after more than just "their fair share of TWC's profits."
(Also interesting to note...There was mention of TWC wanting a cut of viacom's online ad pie.... but nothing about the details. Was it's TWC's counter offer? Technically viacom having full episodes on their site could easily be dropping actual live viewership, which in turn could be hurting the income generated from TWC's ability to place local ads on the channel (which help subsidize the cost of carrying the programming). It could also have been something TWC was looking at as a way of helping to lower the increase that would be passed along to consumers in the form of a rate increase by using it to subsidize the costs. "Ok... we'll pay the extra 30% per sub, but we want 5% of the online ad revenue" |
