19 million cable viewers in NY and LA are close to losing some of their favorite cable channels, including SpikeTV, which broadcasts UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter, UFC Unleashed, UFC Countdown, and UFC Fight Night.

Viacom claims it has been trying to negotiate a “fair” renewal of its prized cable channels for months and months, but reputedly Time Warner Cable has been unresponsive and “unreasonable” so talks have stalled. The nation’s 2nd largest cable system operator, in turn, claims Viacom is asking for “exorbitant” increases in carriage fees which would have to be passed along to the customer. So now this fight between the two Big Media giants will hurt cable viewers.

At 12:01 AM on January 1st, just after the ball drops in Time Square, Time Warner Cable’s 13.3 million subscribers will lose 19 Viacom channels including Comedy Central, CMT, Pure Country, Logo, Palladia, MTV, MTV 2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, MTV Tr3s, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Nick 2, Nicktoons, Spike, The N, TV Land, Vh1, Vh1 Classic, and Vh1 Soul.

The howling starts here, especially by parents home for the holidays with children who won’t have access to their favorite shows like SpongeBob Squarepants and Dora The Explorer, and tweens/teens wanting to see new episodes of those new unreality Reality TV series, The City and Bromance, and twentysomethings and older who get their news from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report.

This affects all U.S. Time Warner cable subscribers including those in New York and Los Angeles. Alex Dudley, a vice president at Time Warner Cable, the nation’s second-largest cable operator, is telling reporters that the dispute with Viacom “is that they have asked for an exorbitant increase in their carriage fees and their network ratings are sagging.”

However, Nickelodeon is 2008’s No. 1 basic cable network, drawing the largest audience in its history. MTV, on the other hand, has seen ratings slide. Time Warner Cable claims it’s “trying to hold the line on fees for our customer” — but they are really worried that if Viacom gets its raises, then every cable programmer will want them.

TWC claims Viacom has asked for fee increases of between 22% and 36% per channel, but Sumner Redstone’s company maintains the increases would cost less than $.25 a month for the package of channels per subscriber who spend a fifth of total TV time watching Viacom shows but its fees make up less than 2.5% of the Time Warner cable bill. (Sports channels are paid the biggest cable premium).

Time Warner Cable also is complaining that Viacom’s popular shows are rerun on websites where Viacom collects advertising revenue that it does not share with Time Warner. On the other hand, Viacom has staked much of its revenue-growth prospects on squeezing higher carriage rates out of its cable and satellite affiliates despite an ad slowdown and weaker ratings.

Apparently you can call this number to DEMAND they put your favorite channels back on the air: 1-212-358-0900

Leave a Reply