‘Teen Mom,’ ‘Teen Wolf’ lost on DirecTV; provider, Viacom at impasse

It’s starting to become more and more commonplace, but cable providers are balking at paying higher carriage fees for some of the biggest networks in the business. AMC Networks and Dish Network are still at an impasse that is potentially going to cause the provider’s subscribers to miss the Sunday premiere of “Breaking Bad,” and now we are looking at similar sort of problem courtesy of parent company Viacom and DirecTV.

Basically, what has happened here is that they network company has been asking for a much higher carriage fee that is proportional to the amount of ratings and content that they bring in for DirecTV subscribers, and the company has been reluctant to pay what they feel is an outrageous price that could lead to a mark-up on the consumer end. With that in mind, all Viacom programming is now dark on the service until a deal is reached.

So what networks does this effect? Some of the biggest losses include MTV (“Teen Mom,” “Jersey Shore”), Nickelodeon (“SpongeBob SquarePants”), Spike TV (“Ink Master”), BET (“The Game”), and VH1 (“Basketball Wives”). There is a pretty wide array of programming that DirecTV subscribers are now missing out on, so in order to avoid risk of losing some of these people to Dish or other competition, we have a feeling that this is going to be resolved as soon as possible.

With over 20 million subscribers, DirecTV is one of the biggest names on the market; meanwhile, MTV, Nickelodeon, and BET are each one of the most-watched cable networks in their given demographics. This is a pretty major loss, and it is going to be a pretty interesting case to follow.

Why do you think we are seeing so many more examples of these disputes at the moment? If you want to read up on the AMC – Dish Network dispute, be sure to check out our article here.

Photo: MTV