The 3/31 deadline is quickly approaching for the 890 members of the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) to sign a new retrans deal with Viacom or lose access to networks including as MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, VH1 and Comedy Central.
Fierce Cable notes that messages are starting to pop up on NCTC member sites around the country such as RMA Cable in Rancho Murieta, CA, which said in a post on RanchoMurieta.com that “RMA Cable and the NCTC are pressing Viacom to re-think the level of the rate increase.”
If such re-thought doesn’t happen or negotiations don’t extend, “they may require us to stop carriage of their channels until a final agreement is reached.”
Rock Hill, SC-based Comporium is in negotiations with Viacom, owner of MTV Networks, to continue offering its channels, but Comporium leaders say the current Viacom proposal would have costly repercussions.
“While we are restricted from talking about specific rates, Viacom demanded a rate increase that’s 40 times the rate of inflation,” Comporium Vice President Glenn McFadden told the Rock Hill Herald.
McFadden compared it to the price of gas jumping overnight from $3.50 a gallon to $6.
“That’s the scale of this large increase,” he said. “In addition, Viacom may demand we drop their networks if we don’t agree to their proposal.”
NCTC has put up a website to inform subscribers about the impact of the dispute. NCTC members, who average fewer than 1,500 subscribers per company, could potentially be devastated were Viacom to follow a procedure of blacking out its 15 channels and encouraging subscribers to sign up with competing satellite operators.
The American Cable Association, while not directly addressing the Viacom programming dispute, issued a press release urging the FCC to recognize the NCTC in its new video competition report because, ACA CEO Matt Polka said, “a report on video competition to Congress would be lacking if it failed to acknowledge the vital role of buying groups.”
ACA pointed out that about half of NCTC members serve fewer than 1,000 subscribers.
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