DISH network drops all Viacom channels

[OnyxCougar]

I wasn't with Cox when the Fox thing went down, but it nearly went down again, 2 months ago, with Fox and ESPN.

Fox came to an agreement fairly quickly, but ESPN got ugly, and it came within 3 months of pulling ESPN from the lineup. Cox had the numbers, and publicly displayed them (www.makethemplayfair.com), and ESPN responded by saying Cox wanted to pull ESPN off the line up.

I can say, as a customer, that I would rather not pay $2.25 for 3 sports channels on the Expanded lineup if I don't have to. I don't watch them, why do I have to pay for them? 2 ESPN channels accounts for more of the expanded lineup cost than all the viacom channels and 3 other channels COMBINED.

So Cox said, look. either reduce your price per channel INCREASES to a reasonable percentage, or let us MOVE the ESPN channels to a separate tier, and charge whatever the hell you want.

Well, of course, they don't want us to TIER services, because less than 12% of customers would pick them up. That means even LESS money than they make now! Oh no, we want you to keep them on the expanded tier AND charge you 500% increases over 10 years.

Yeah.

And people bitch when their cable bill goes up or when we drop channels. Can't have it both ways. We (the cable company) have to pay the people that OWN the stations to rebroadcast them. They charge us certain rates. If their rate increases, then we are going to pass that increase to the customer. So why be mad at Cox? Be mad at the companies that OWN the channels for raising their rates to us! You wanna know why there are more advertisements on TV? Why cable is so expensive? Ask the actors who work on Friends how much they make an episode, and then figure out where that money comes from.

$.03 cents my ass.