Viacom Pulled from DirecTV

Apparently, Viacom is looking for a 30 percent rate increase. DirecTV, as you might imagine, isn't down with that.

The sad fact of being a satellite TV subscriber is that you have to deal with seemingly constant struggles for content. Dish has been dealing with the loss of content thanks to their new DVR and now DirecTV faces the loss of channels due to a licensing agreement.

"We have been very willing to get a deal done," says DirecTV EVP of Content Derek Chang, "but Viacom is pushing DirecTV customers to pay more than a 30% increase, which equates to an extra $1 billion, despite the fact that the ratings for many of their main networks have plummeted and much of Viacom's programming can be seen for free online."

"We proposed a fair deal that amounted to an increase of only a couple pennies per day, per subscriber, and we remained willing to negotiate that deal right up to this evening's deadline," says Viacom in a statement. "However, DirecTV refused to engage in meaningful conversation."

Source: Multichannel News