Smallscreen News

Seventeen cable channels owned by Viacom dark on DirecTV

By April MacIntyre Jul 11, 2012, 5:14 GMT

DirecTV subscribers will be denied access to seventeen cable channels owned by Viacom, which went dark on DirecTV minutes before midnight ET Tuesday as the companies failed to reach an accord.

The MIA cable networks include Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, VH1, CMT and Spike.

"We have absolutely no problem compensating Viacom fairly, but they have now knowingly put our customers in the unreasonable position of either accepting their extravagant financial demands or losing some of their favorite TV shows," said Derek Chang, executive VP of content, strategy and development at DirecTV, in a statement issued.

"We feel our customers should not have to pay more for these networks than the customers of any other TV provider. We reiterated this to Viacom today and have not heard back from them."

Viacom issued a statement of its own early Wednesday. "We are deeply disappointed that DirecTV dropped Viacom's channels before our midnight deadline this evening, severing our connection with its nearly 20 million subscribers nationwide. 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."

DirecTV's rival Dish dropped AMC Networks, home to popular series "Breaking Bad",  "Mad Men" and "The Walking Dead" from its lineup 10 days ago.