July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Cable TV service provider Cablevision is sick and tired of having to carry tons of channels that its subscribers don’t want and, more importantly, don’t want to pay for.

So today, the telecommunications giant filed a lawsuit against cable network Viacom (PDF) for “illegally forcing Cablevision to carry and pay for 14 lesser-watched ancillary networks.”

Right now, if cable TV providers want to offer subscribers MTV, Comedy Central, and Spike, it must bill their customers for MTV 2, VH1 Classic, Nick Jr., and a slew of other, less appealing channels. This practice — called bundling — enables Viacom to demand more money from companies like Cablevision. This isn’t the first time TV providers have pushed back at Viacom, either, as it participated in a very public pissing match with satellite service DirecTV last year.

Should Cablevision win, it could drastically change the pricing model to an “à la carte” system and abolish the current practice of bundled packages of channels (from multiple cable networks) that many of us have no choice but subscribe to each month. For instance, if you only watch HBO, Comedy Central, Science Channel, Discovery, and the History channel, you’d pay a monthly fee for each of them.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that bundled channel pricing will go away entirely, but we’d certainly get smaller bundles. Customers may find that Viacom will charge more for each channel, which could make a Viacom-specific bundled channel package more attractive. But at least that would be more of a choice than what consumers are currently getting.

We’re reaching out to Viacom for a comment about the lawsuit and will update this post with any new information.

Via AllThingsD

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Satellite television provider DirecTV said its subscription prices would rise in the following year, according to a message it released today via a customer support page.

The increased pricing is necessary to compensate for the substantially higher fees on DirecTV’s lineup of channels. DirecTV explained to customers that its paying media companies 8 percent more in 2013 for the same channels, but it promises to only increase the average customer’s monthly bill by about 4.5 percent.

“Almost all programmers who provide channels to the DIRECTV platform are increasing their rates at a level we’ve never seen before,” DirecTV said in the message. “On occasion, some negotiations of new and existing channel contracts have become public recently so you can see we are doing all we can to make sure you do not suffer unfair price increases as a result of unreasonable demands in these disputes.”

If you’re looking for a recent example of the public channel contract negotiations, look no further than the giant spat DirecTV had with Viacom earlier this year. Viacom — which own channels like MTV, Comedy Central, BET, Spike, and several others — demanded a much higher fee when its previous contract with DirecTV expired. Eventually, the two forged a new deal to the tune of DirecTV paying $600 million (over several years) more than its previous contract, but not before Viacom yanked its lineup of channels from the service.

Most media companies refuse to sign contracts for each individual channel they produce, forcing TV providers like DirecTV to buy an entire package. When rates go up, it means either those providers will pay more or their customers will.

Via WSJ