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Rural Cable Customers Aren't Missing Viacom's Pulled Channels

Back in April 60 smaller cable operators including Cable One pulled Viacom's channel lineup after Viacom demanded significantly-higher retransmission fees for that content. For good measure, Viacom also blocked access to their online Internet video content if they got broadband from any of those companies (still blocked even if they had a different TV provider like DirecTV or Dish). How is this tactic working for Viacom? Not great.

While the companies expected to take a big hit for the missing channels, it turns out that customers don't appear to care:
quote:
After bracing to lose as many as a 10th of their customers, the operators have lost less than 2% of their collective subscribers, according to an industry group that represents the operators. Some customers seem unperturbed. "Quite frankly, I can't say I did notice," said David Smith. The 64-year-old tire-shop owner in Edinboro, Pa., is a subscriber to the local company, Coaxial Cable Television Corp. He said he hadn't watched Viacom channels in at least a dozen years.
Granted that could be limited competition (or the annoyance of switching TV providers just to watch Stephen Colbert) that has kept losses to a minimum. The report also notes how Viacom's focus is on younger, "edgy" urban-minded programming and most of these cable operators are older users in rural markets. Still, as we saw with the Weather Channel and DirecTV, these kinds of heavy handed tactics only work if you're actually selling something customers want.

Most recommended from 25 comments


NefCanuck
join:2007-06-26
Mississauga, ON

2 recommendations

NefCanuck

Member

This result should worry Viacom

If they (Viacom) aren't producing content on these channels that people want to switch providers for, or even to complain to their current providers about losing access to them, I think this is the "canary in the coal mine" for the content industry.

Content may be king, but "worthless" content is just that, worth *less*

NefCanuck