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Author Topic: Viacom & Echostar Squabble Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-09-2004 08:29 AM                     Dish Network customers now have blank channels where Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, CBS network related channels and more are supposed to be. This is all due to an increasingly bitter contract "negotiation" that became even more bitter and deadlocked in recent weeks. In the wee hours of this morning, all the Viacom channels were removed from the Echostar satellites. I've been a Dish Network customer since 1999, and was the first guy on my block to have a two line Dish 500 dish. But I'm not going to pay upwards of $50 a month for service that does not include channels like Comedy Central and VH1. Dish Network's website is currently clogged with traffic and virtually unreachable. Their phone lines are hopelessly busy with lots of angry calls. Viacom's website has no e-mail contact information. What I would like to tell them both is they need to work things out very quickly and in such a manner that it doesn't jack up my monthly satellite bill. It has been years since my last pay raise, so I really will not be made to have any sympathy for them getting one either. With times being difficult, I'm always looking at new ways to cut costs. With Echostar and Viacom behaving like a couple greedy, insolent bastards, I'm now looking at saving myself around $45 a month by cutting both of those morons out of my wallet.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-09-2004 08:56 AM                        In a possibly related story... Bell ExpressVu lost sound for a few minutes on nearly all of their channels "during the wee hours" this morning. Echostar runs the ExpressVu service for Bell. quote: With times being difficult, I'm always looking at new ways to cut costs. Got a scalpel and a soldering iron?  |  IP: Logged Mike Olpin Chop Chop! Posts: 1852 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Jan 2002 posted 03-09-2004 10:15 AM                     Dish & Viacom are the devil! My dad installed dish network because they carry BYU TV. I hate it! The video quality blows, the picture garbles and drops out on cloudy days (yes, the dish is pointed correctly) and it doesn't offer two way communication like cable does (needed for on-demand content which will become more popular a few years down the road). Does Viacom need more money? Hell no. They own some of the most watched networks, a major studio, the worlds largest video rental chain, and a tv distribution company. They are unnecisarily PRICE GOUGING consumers. By the way, I doubt that there asking for more money from DirecTV, which they unrelentlessly hawk in their Blockbuster stores. Oh, and the "wigga-wigga Viacom!" logo bugs me.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-09-2004 10:23 AM                        Out of curiosity, what's your signal strength percentage. I've got a friend with a Dish Network system that gets 96% signal up here with a 20" dish. I've got 100% signal strength on my ExpressVu dish. Even through some nasty blizzards it has yet to drop out. I've only lost the signal when the dish got blown down the street. Maybe the Dish Network coverage isn't great where you are since you can't really go any further south west in the continental US, or maybe your azimuth is a little (or even a lot) off.  |  IP: Logged Chris Erwin Expert Film Handler Posts: 195 From: Olive Hill,KY Registered: Oct 1999 posted 03-09-2004 10:24 AM                     I don't have the dish anymore (digital cable) but I notice that VH1,MTV,etc. has been running a crawl at the bottom stating that these channels may no longer be available on Dish Network and to call Dish Network and ask for them to keep their programming.  |  IP: Logged Jeff Taylor Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 601 From: Chatham, NJ/East Hampton, NY Registered: Apr 2000 posted 03-09-2004 11:00 AM                     Sounds like a replay of the hassle cable folks went through last year when George Steinbrenner invented the YES network and began gouging for Yankee games while insisting that it be a basic service. Cablevision (MSG network) subscribers took it on the chin for six months before that was resolved. I've got Direct TV and am delighted with it, but now that Hughes has sold out to Murdoch we'll probably be in the same boat. It's all part and parcel of mixing programming and distribution, and we're going to see more rather than less of it in the future.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-09-2004 11:16 AM                     quote: I notice that VH1,MTV,etc. has been running a crawl at the bottom stating that these channels may no longer be available on Dish Network and to call Dish Network and ask for them to keep their programming. I saw the same crawl when watching the Chappelle Show on Comedy Central. Well, I saw the beginning of it anyway. Then it was blocked out by a big black bar at the bottom of the screen. The black bar was Echostar's doing. I understand Echostar violated their carriage agreement by doing that. Here's an interesting news item that might make Echostar and Viacom want to rethink their increased pricing (this from a CNN report): quote: February is one of the television industry's "sweeps" periods, when ratings are used to set local TV advertising rates, and Sony said that 65 percent of its online gaming audience during TV's prime time -- 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. week nights -- were men aged 18 to 34. I have to admit, I am more often working on my computer and using my DSL line during prime time rather than watching TV at all. So honestly, I should get a price break and so should companies advertising on TV. That little video game study will be a nice tidbit for me to use to underscore the importance of investing in signs as a retail business' most important and most visible marketing tool. TV don't matter!!! The clock is ticking on those guys. I can live without cable or satellite TV. I've done it before. With the greed being displayed, those f**kers at Viacom and Echostar can starve for all I care. [ 03-09-2004, 02:12 PM: Message edited by: Bobby Henderson ]  |  IP: Logged Aaron Sisemore Flaming Ribs beat Reeses Peanut Butter Cups any day! Posts: 3061 From: Rockwall TX USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-09-2004 12:42 PM                     Cartoon Network isn't a Viacom product. (it's owned by TimeWarner). -Aaron  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-09-2004 01:02 PM                     quote: Bobby Henderson: ... I can live with cable or satellite TV. ... You can live without TV all together if you really want. I did it for almost 2 years. After that, it's been almost 2 years that I only have local network channels off-air. After a while you'll stop missing TV. After that, when you watch TV again you'll say, "What am I missing?... Nothing!" Suddenly, you'll realize how addicting television really is and how little you really get out of it for the money you put into it! My wife and I watch, maybe, a couple hours of TV at night before we go to bed. Neither of us see any wisdom in paying $40 - $50 per month for the kind of crap they try to stuff down your throat!  |  IP: Logged Mike Olpin Chop Chop! Posts: 1852 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Jan 2002 posted 03-09-2004 01:19 PM                     Aarons right. Cartoon Network is still up.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-09-2004 02:19 PM                     The Cartoon Network thing was just a quick off-the-cuff guess (I thought the same company that owned Nickelodeon owned all those kiddie channels). I'm pretty serious about turning off that satellite dish, especially if there aren't any immediately attractive offers from rival DirecTV. Lawton Cablevision here is a laughable joke and local vertical monopoly. I'll put a sledgehammer through my TV set before ever becoming a customer of theirs. With many cable TV series having season sets being released on DVD to buy and/or rent, there's not nearly as much pressure to subscribe as there used to be.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-09-2004 02:31 PM                     Yeah! What we do when we want to watch something different is go to the video store and rent what we want. We pop some popcorn (Whirley Pop! Not that microwave shtuff!) light a fire in the fireplace and curl up on the sofa. There are people who spend 12 X $50 = $600 per year to have cable TV and $1000+ to have a super duper home video system. We spend, maybe, $100 per year on TV! If there's a movie that we want to watch, we'll occasionally go see it in the theater but, to tell the truth, that's too much like WORK to me!  |  IP: Logged Gary Crawford Expert Film Handler Posts: 200 From: Neptune NJ USA Registered: Nov 2003 posted 03-09-2004 02:36 PM                     I'm not trying to say to move to another service here... My first home small sat dish service was, and still is, DirecTV. They haven't done me wrong at all, price stays steady, quality is always there. Mounted a dual-LNB mini dish and have 2 IRDs and I've had no complaints. With the problems with Viacom maybe the other services will offer some nice deals again. Only problems I ever had were dish full of snow (and close enough to the ground to sweep out) and during a real bad thunderstorm (twice) I lost signal for a few minutes but I can live with those problems.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 03-09-2004 11:35 PM                        Echostar's position is that Viacom wants a 40% increase over the life of their new contract term, whatever that is (they don't say). In the Seattle market, all those channels are down now, replaced by funky organ music and an invitation to complain to Viacom. It's kinda funny, really. This sort of stuff goes on all the time between content providers and cable systems. Guess we've been insulated up to this point. No biggie to me though. I can live without all those channels... never watch 'em & don't really have a problem that my kids can't either (though they don't seem to care as much as I thought they would). As for the quality, yah, it blows, but considering they're putting 4,000 channels up on 3 satellites with a 12" pizza pan for a dish, you probably can't reasonably compare it to C-band.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 03-09-2004 11:42 PM                    Split an analog cable subscription with a neighbor.  |  IP: Logged

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