EchoStar And Viacom Dueling

[Brown]

Here are a couple of stories, one from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/09/business/media/09CND-DISH.html?hp) (registration required) and one from the Star Tribune and AP (http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/4653097.html).

During "60 Minutes" last Sunday, a little message scrolled across the bottom of the screen. It said that Dish Network (EchoStar) customers (of which I am one) are in danger of losing the local CBS affiliate, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, among other channels, and that we should call Dish Network and demand the channels that we paid for. The message included Dish Network's telephone number.

So I called the Dish Network to see what was up. I got a recorded message saying that Viacom was unreasonably jacking up its rates, and we should complain to Viacom. The message included a name and phone number of a person we should call.

As of today, some of my Viacom channels are "dark." (I haven't verified this personally yet.)

My sympathies are with EchoStar. I've been very happy with Dish Network as a whole, and I don't want to switch to another company. I sure as hell don't want to switch back to cable, which was a nightmare. (Dish Network reportedly will pay me a rebate for channels that I don't receive.)

Also, I don't particularly care if I can't see the CBS affiliate or Comedy Central or Nickelodeon or MTV or BET or Nick at Nite. If they're dark, it's no big loss.

[Segnosaur]

Originally posted by Brown

During "60 Minutes" last Sunday, a little message scrolled across the bottom of the screen. It said that Dish Network (EchoStar) customers (of which I am one) are in danger of losing the local CBS affiliate, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, among other channels, and that we should call Dish Network and demand the channels that we paid for.

They scrolled the same type of message during the broadcast of WWF Raw. (I guess Spike TV and UPN may be affected too.)

Originally posted by Brown

Also, I don't particularly care if I can't see the CBS affiliate or Comedy Central or Nickelodeon or MTV or BET or Nick at Nite. If they're dark, it's no big loss.
But without Comedy central, you won't be able to see The Daily Show, and then where will you get your news?

[Grammatron]

Originally posted by Segnosaur

They scrolled the same type of message during the broadcast of WWF Raw. (I guess Spike TV and UPN may be affected too.)


But without Comedy central, you won't be able to see The Daily Show, and then where will you get your news?

The Daily Show is getting very close to being respectable, unbiased news source...that's a very scary concept.

[AlH]

I noticed that a couple of channels had a press info label on them this morning. Fortunately for me, I don't watch any of the "lost" channels, I get CBS over rabbit ears just fine. TVLand is about the only one I might miss and I haven't watched anything there since the 1st of the year when they ran a day-long special of first episodes for a bunch of the shows they air.

Channel 101 on Dish has a blurb about it, with an e-mail address for Charlie Ergen, owner of Dish, plus 2 numbers for Viacom if you want to contact either party.

I think there will be a $1.00 credit for the loss of the channels on your bill.

Viacom's statement isn't very clear, are they asking for an increase of 6 cents per subscriber for their whole package or 6 cents per subscriber per channel?

I've toyed with the idea of dropping satellite altogether, with fiascos such as Sci-Fi cancelling Farscape as requiring too much thought by their viewers and redefining science fiction to be practically anything filmed with a camera, and every channel jumping on the reality-series bandwagon, there is almost nothing on worth watching. I exercise on my treadmill an hour a day and even time-shifting, I cannot find 7 hours of television to watch each week during that. I got through last week by picking up The Tick on dvd, next is Firefly.

[Brown]

Originally posted by Segnosaur
But without Comedy central, you won't be able to see The Daily Show, and then where will you get your news? I don't watch "The Daily Show." I do watch "South Park," but I don't care whether I miss some episodes.

[Segnosaur]

Originally posted by Brown
I don't watch "The Daily Show." I do watch "South Park," but I don't care whether I miss some episodes.

At least you can download south park from the Internet.

[Brown]

Wow, the web sites for Viacom and Dish Network are overloaded. Looks like some people are pretty honked off.

Not only that, it's time for soap operas, and people who don't get their daily soap operas can get pretty testy.

[Brown]

I watched the two sides to the dispute trade "blows" yesterday. It appears that there are some interesting dynamics.

On the face of it, neither side really seems to care about what the customer thinks. Dish Network says, "Complain to Viacom" and Viacom says "Complain to Dish Network, or go to another provider." Both sides point the finger at the other side as being the one responsible for the loss of programming.

On closer review, however, there is a distinct difference in the two companies' tactics. Dish Network is at least taking and acknowledging some customer feedback. For the most part, all you get are canned responses and recorded announcements, but it is clear that the Dish Network folks are listening at least a little bit. Dish Network has taken some calls and some e-mail from its customers, and has reported some of them (favorable and unfavorable). Dish Network has also given out e-mail addresses where people can provide feedback to Dish Network.

But try to give the same feedback to Viacom. You can't. Some people have reported that Viacom won't even answer the phone. (This may have changed... I haven't tried to contact Viacom lately.) Dish Network posts phone numbers and e-mail addresses, both for itself and Viacom, but Viacom posts only info about contacting Dish Network. Viacom would prefer that all the complaints go to Dish Network.

Also, Viacom keeps throwing around a "six cents" figure, which is fishy as hell.We don't really understand why. Because despite what they are saying now, the increases we've been asking for are both modest and reasonable -- amounting to less than 6 cents per month per subscriber for all of our services (combined) including CBS and BET. Viacom does not say where that figure comes from, and I suspect that there's some "fuzzy math" going on there. Dish Network says:Viacom is demanding rate increases nearly 4 times the rate of inflation for various cable channels......which suggests that there is considerable disagreement about the amount of the increase. The CEO of Dish Network said that if really was only six cents a month for everything, there wouldn't be a dispute.

And some of the things that the Dish Network folks say has a ring of truth, and as far as I can tell, are not denied by Viacom. Basically, Dish Network complains that Viacom wants Dish Network to buy a whole bunch of channels, most of which are crap, and pay for the whole bundle. It's an all-or-nothing deal. It's a pretty fair bet that the bundle costs more per month than the previous fee plus six cents. Dish Network basically says, "We don't want to have to buy and broadcast all the crap."

Each side is accusing the other of extortion. This is interesting, since Viacom made a big deal about trying to yank the Super Bowl from Dish Network, and now Viacom is going out of its way to point out that the NCAA tournament is coming up.

I still plan to ride this thing out. Viacom's suggestion that I go to cable is ridiculous, and I am unimpressed by Direct TV. As of this point, three channels on my list of favorites are dark, but I don't watch them all that much, and I don't miss them.

[Grammatron]

Originally posted by Segnosaur


At least you can download south park from the Internet.

What can't you download on the Internet?

[Brown]

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/business/media/10tube.html) (registration required) has a little story about the dispute. It makes for interesting reading.

The Times makes at least one mistake, though. In a sidebar, the Times suggests that the affected markets have "several" cable alternatives. I don't know how it is elsewhere, but the fact that the Twin Cities hosts four cable companies doesn't mean that I can get cable service from any of those companies. (At least, I don't think it does.)

I was a cable subscriber, and a happy one at that, for two years. My cable company at the time was Time Warner, and I liked the company's service. But about two and a half years ago, I moved, and my new home was in another cable company's territory. I had no choice about what cable company to use.

In short, the service was bad, the picture was bad, the sound was bad, the equipment was lame, the system navigation was putrid, and the rates were outrageous. This particular cable company was so bad that I decided that not to use its services or its successor's services.

If I can't get SpongeBob or Survivor, who cares. I'm not going back to that cable system.

[Brown]

The dispute has been resolved, according to the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/business/11CND-TUBE.html?hp) (registration required).

[shanek]

Good that it's resolved...it was covered quite extensively in last Monday's Charlie Chat, and they gave out some of the details; it's clear that Viacom was being unreasonable. They were using their cable networks as hostage in order to shove a higher retransmission consent agreement in the 16 US cities where Viacom owns the CBS affiliate down Echostar's throats.

They held a special Charlie Chat the next day for people in those cities (which I couldn't see, since I'm not in one of those cities), but he invited Viacom to send a spokesperson on to give their side of the story. They declined, but still, Charlie Ergen is quite the mensch. He just wants the best deal for his customers, to keep quality high and prices low, and is willing to let the other side of the debate have its say.

[shanek]

Oh, and the channels are all back on now.

[Brown]

Originally posted by shanek
Oh, and the channels are all back on now. I note no improvement in the quality of programming on those channels. I sure hope they didn't cost too much more. When I last checked, neither side was providing any details about the deal that they reached.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Brown
I note no improvement in the quality of programming on those channels. I sure hope they didn't cost too much more. When I last checked, neither side was providing any details about the deal that they reached.

It wasn't those channels that were really in dispute anyway. My understanding is that Viacom was increasing the retransmission fees for rebroadcasting their CBS affiliates (a power Congress in the SHVIA gave to broadcasters as a means to browbeat satellite providers) and held their other channels hostage unless Echostar agreed to the deal. So, if my understanding is correct, the prices on those other channels did not go up for Echostar, and we should not see our bills go up as a result.

[Brown]

Originally posted by shanek
It wasn't those channels that were really in dispute anyway. My understanding is that Viacom was increasing the retransmission fees for rebroadcasting their CBS affiliates (a power Congress in the SHVIA gave to broadcasters as a means to browbeat satellite providers) and held their other channels hostage unless Echostar agreed to the deal. So, if my understanding is correct, the prices on those other channels did not go up for Echostar, and we should not see our bills go up as a result. I had a hard time following the details of the dispute myself. Echostar didn't give too many details, and Viacom gave almost none. According to Charlie, Viacom insisted upon bundling CBS with a bunch of other channels, many of them garbage channels that Echostar didn't want to waste its resources carrying. (Also, Dish Network does not bundle other Viacom channels with CBS--local channels are provided separately from the other channels, for a special fee.) Echostar wanted to negotiate a rate for CBS and negotiate a separate rate for the other channels, but Viacom stuck to an "all or nothing" position.

I suspect that there were a lot of other sub-issues and side issues in play, and one of them may have been that Echostar felt it had to take a stand, otherwise others would follow Viacom's lead.