Topic 'No happy medium' in forum '' - dslreports.com

Re: No happy medium

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:48:34 EDT

marigolds posted : FCC rules allow Viacom to write tier requirements into the contract. The contracts are confidential, but experience shows that nearly every channel on basic or expanded basic cable has a tier requirement.

Re: No happy medium

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:59:38 EDT

rf_engineer posted :

said by marigolds:

The tier option was likely not available. Viacom could only be moved to a separate tier if they agreed to be moved. Since this would have killed their ad revenue, there is really no way they would have agreed to it.

Do you know for a fact that the tier option wasn't available? The only way I could see that a tier/package option wasn't available was due to some previous agreement between TWC and Viacom. Obviously whatever agreement they had before ran out 12/31/08 24:00 :-)

I think that was really the only viable and equitable solution to this situation, considering things were at a stalemate. As I mentioned in a previous posting, TWC should have let Viacom charge whatever they wanted for the channels, TWC add a reasonable profit margin, and then throw the channels into a separate package. That way it's put up or shut up time for Viacom; they would have to price it correctly and deliver the right programming to attract subscribers to the package. Performance based agreements make sense, not this "we're Viacom and people will be pissed if you lose our channels, pay up" stuff.

Re: No happy medium

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:22:28 EDT

en102 posted : Well, I at least got a nice credit of a month and then some for their mess ups with 'FX West' in Santa Clarita.
Its been off since before Xmas and replaced with 'Sleuth' on Standard Cable, (but works on digital) which contradicts their documented 2009 channel lineup, their online channel lineup, their TV guide channel lineup, etc.

Basic Cable34The Weather Channel37CNN38Headline News39Fox News Channel40USA Network41TBS42TNT43FX# Digital Cable Pkg*43FX106FX

I suspect that they don't pay much attention to channel lineups on analog anymore, as even their CS staff keeps asking me to check channel 106 (digital) even though I mention that its on basic cable, without a box. Channel 106 is 'snow' on CATV ;)

Those in Valencia (91355) - call in and demand a refund.

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Canada = Hollywood North

Re: No happy medium

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:20:37 EDT

Vchat20 posted : Well, you are always going to get the extremely out of whack CEO salaries. Tell me any publicly traded company not like this. And there are plenty of costs involved with simply everyday operation from customer service rep pay, plant maintenance, gas for trucks to do truck rolls, the list goes on. It's a vicious cycle of transfer of money between customers, employees, the content providers, etc.. While I am not denying that some cable rate raises are simply for increased profits for the cable co, it is certainly not always the case and this specific time is a perfect example.

Disregarding any complaints about rate increases as Karl likes to eagerly point out (and I should add was completely brought on by Viacom in this case considering the exorbitant increase they were originally asking for), Time Warner did the best damage control they were capable of and took a middle-of-the-road position here to appease everyone involved.

But really, this happens all the time. Just it's not as heavily publicised as this. The only time this came about is because Viacom decided to pull the 'dumb viewer' card and put TW in a bad light by plastering messages on all their channels acting as if it was all TW's fault for the channels disappearing.
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I swear, some people should have pace-makers installed to free up the resources. Breathing and heart beat taxes their whole system, all of their brain cells wasted on life support.-two bit brains, and the second bit is wasted on parity! ~head_spaz

Re: No happy medium

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:56:05 EDT

Ray422 posted : Awwww geez, it's just so terribly expensive to deliver that tv service to your household. Besides that increase; please don't forget that we will need to increase executive pay and bonuses by another 250 million in 2009.

We actually need a government bailout to help us through these tough times, things are just terrible. Thanks for your understanding on the gigantic new rate increase.

Re: No happy medium

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:02:53 EDT

Vchat20 posted : That too, which also adds to the dilemma at hand.

Re: No happy medium

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:27:31 EDT

marigolds posted : The tier option was likely not available. Viacom could only be moved to a separate tier if they agreed to be moved. Since this would have killed their ad revenue, there is really no way they would have agreed to it.

No happy medium

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:09:59 EDT

Vchat20 posted : Really there is no ultimate solution to this that'll appease everyone. Viacom wants major profits and more subscriber money but Time Warner doesn't want to give it to them.

~If Time Warner would have given in to their demands, cable prices would have gone up and people would have bitched.
~If they held to their guns and cut out all Viacom programming, you'd have the people who want those channels bitching.
~If they rather decided to move those channels to another tier, you'd have the people bitching that 'I don't want to pay for an extra tier for channels I used to get standard'.
~They could have also done the tier thing and raised subscription rates so Viacom could get the same profit with less subscribers but that'd exacerbate the above issue.

But the actual outcome here was ultimately the best as it got Viacom to at least come down off their greedy fee requirements and keep the channels in place.

All in all though, you can't really start going after TW for this since it is all Viacom's doing to begin with and they've done it to so many other providers in the past as well with not-so-pleasant results.
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I swear, some people should have pace-makers installed to free up the resources. Breathing and heart beat taxes their whole system, all of their brain cells wasted on life support.-two bit brains, and the second bit is wasted on parity! ~head_spaz