Deadline Approaching for Time Warner

Negotiations between Time Warner Cable and Viacom have turned sour. Viacom, the media company that is responsible for television channels such as Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, and VH1, has threatened to make its channels go dark at 12:01 a.m. on New Years Day if Time Warner won't comply with their terms, as the Associated Press reports.

What does Viacom want? More money, of course. In fact, they are asking for carriage fee increases of between 22 percent and 36 percent for each channel.

Viacom's reasoning is simple; American viewers spend 20 percent of their time in front of the television watching shows provided by Viacom, but only 2.5 percent of the Time Warner Cable bill comes back to Viacom. In other words, they feel as though Time Warner has "greatly undervalued [their] channels for so long," a spokesperson states.

A Time Warner VP, Alex Dudley, takes the customer's side on this issue. An "exorbitant increase in [Viacom's] carriage fees . . ." would mean for higher cable bills; 23 cents more a month for each of their 13 million subscribers to be exact. To Dudley, the increase seems like a lot for which Viacom is asking, whose programming has lost ratings in the past term.

Viacom also makes a considerable amount of money from offering reruns of its programs on the Internet for free; something that bothers Time Warner, who sees no royalties from Internet broadcasts of Viacom shows.

So, if a deal cannot be reached sometime today between the two companies, Time Warner Cable could lose all Viacom programming. The channels included are: Comedy Central, CMT, 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.