Viacom Says Carriage Renewal Talks With Dish Network Derailed--Update
April 19 2016 - 3:07PM
Dow Jones News
By Keach Hagey
Viacom Inc. said its discussions with satellite TV provider Dish
Network Corp. to renew carriage of its TV channels have broken
down, raising the prospect that its programming could go dark for
Dish's 14 million customers as early as Thursday.
The media company, owner of networks such as Nickelodeon, Comedy
Central, MTV and TV Land, accused Dish of making unreasonable
demands, despite its offer of a "best-in-class" deal on rates and
terms for carriage of its networks.
"We are extremely disappointed that Dish has not engaged in a
serious way to reach an agreement for Viacom's number one family of
cable networks," Viacom said in a statement. "Dish has made demands
that are designed to be impossible to meet in order to take our
negotiations public and likely force our programming off the
air."
Viacom shares fell 8% on the news in early afternoon
trading.
The negotiations have been closely watched on Wall Street.
Monthly subscription fees from pay TV providers are a major source
of revenue and profits for media companies. When some small cable
operators dropped Viacom channels in 2014, investors began to worry
that a bigger distributor like Dish might follow suit.
The current standoff with Dish has become an important measuring
stick for Viacom to prove that its channels can continue to receive
wide distribution even as cord-cutting adds pressure to the
television industry.
Viacom and Dish's last agreement expired at the end of January,
and the two companies have been operating under a series of
short-term extensions since then. The latest of these expires at
11:59 p.m. Wednesday, according to a Viacom spokesman.
Dish said "Viacom unilaterally elected to terminate" talks
despite "meaningful progress" on a new agreement and the
"indefinite" nature of the contract extension.
"Viacom is asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in
increases, despite the changing landscape that includes drastically
reduced viewership of Viacom channels and wide availability of
their content across multiple platforms," said a Dish spokesman in
a statement.
Dish is known for bruising carriage negotiations with media
companies and has had standoffs with other big conglomerates
including Time Warner Inc., 21st Century Fox and Comcast Corp.'s
NBCUniversal, as well as various TV-station owners.
Viacom, which reports earnings next week, has suffered a nearly
50% drop in its stock over the past year as investors worried about
its sliding ratings that the prospect that the young-skewing
audience for its networks makes it especially vulnerable to
cord-cutting.
Viacom's ratings were down 3% across its portfolio for the first
week in April, as gains at BET and VH1 were pulled down by a 16%
drop at Comedy Central, 10% drop at Spike and 5% drop at MTV,
according to an analysis of Nielsen ratings by Sanford C. Bernstein
analyst Todd Juenger.
Viacom said it had begun running a crawl on its channels for
Dish customers informing them of the contentious state of
negotiations.
Write to Keach Hagey at keach.hagey@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 19, 2016 14:52 ET (18:52 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
DISH Network (NASDAQ:DISH)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
DISH Network (NASDAQ:DISH)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024