Viacom/DIRECTV Spat Continues

NEW YORK/EL SEGUNDO: Viacom says that DIRECTV has "no intention" of working with the company to resolve the carriage fee dispute that has left the platform’s subscribers without access to more than 20 channels, while DIRECTV alleges that Viacom has made EPIX a hurdle in the negotiations.

Viacom said in a statement: "We made a significant and comprehensive compromise proposal to DIRECTV last Thursday that could have resulted in restoring all of our services to DIRECTV subscribers by Friday morning. We have since made several additional compromise proposals—even as recently as last night—to find a resolution acceptable to DIRECTV. Unfortunately, DIRECTV has moved backwards significantly and created more obstacles to reaching an agreement." Viacom believes that the platform "will continue to purposefully and indefinitely deprive its subscribers of MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, TV Land, VH1, Spike, CMT and 18 other Viacom channels." The conglomerate is calling on DIRECTV customers to switch providers.

The DTH platform, meanwhile, has refuted Viacom’s claims about the breakdown in negotiations as "completely false. Please know that we are indeed continuing to negotiate with Viacom so they can return the channels to our customers as soon as possible. Just last night, Viacom made a proposal for the return of the 17 channels they dropped from DIRECTV. Earlier this morning, we accepted all material terms for those channels including an increase that was more than fair.  We are ready to sign that deal immediately.  What’s holding things up right now is that they are insisting that we launch the EPIX movie channel (an extra channel that DIRECTV has never carried) at the additional cost of more than a half billion dollars. Whatever way you slice it, the main issue remains the same. Viacom’s total price tag to continue carrying channels is just too high and will adversely affect our customers.  And so, as we have done every day since this began, we will be back on the phones negotiating with the Viacom executives tomorrow so we can get closer to a final deal.  We are too close to turn back now.  The fact is Viacom and DIRECTV need each other so we will get this done."

In response, Viacom said, "DIRECTV’s most recent press release regarding EPIX is one more complete work of fiction from the company. We’ve offered DIRECTV various compromise proposals—proposals without EPIX, proposals with EPIX, and proposals with significant incentives to carry EPIX. DIRECTV did not accept all material terms for our channels, nor are we asking for a sum of $500 million for EPIX. Nothing in the press release reflects the reality of the negotiations, which, sadly, are at an impasse."