DirecTV Faces its First Ever Loss of Customers

[TheDickWard]

It appears the spat with Viacom had a significant effect on the company. DirecTV says the drop is due to policy.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/directv-q2-2012

[Krawk]

I wish they would lose customers due to poor bandwidth for each channel shown on their lineup, resulting in piss-poor vhs type quality.

If it was because of Viacom, SHAME on the people that dropped their service. This just encourages the providers to continue playing these games. Hearst wanted a 300 percent increase here on the east coast with Time Warner, Viacom wanted a 40 percent increase with Directv.
Be it 300 percent or 40 percent, look at the rate of inflation in general then look at your bill and say that either increase would be acceptable to you and your wallet. NOPE

[rickman33]

If it was because of Viacom, SHAME on the people that dropped their service. This just encourages the providers to continue playing these games. Hearst wanted a 300 percent increase here on the east coast with Time Warner, Viacom wanted a 40 percent increase with Directv.

I switched over to Dish Network because my bill is cheaper and they had Viacom. I can care less about AMC. DirecTV seems to do a pretty good job of making sure they carry more channels, but at the price of interruptions and expense. I remember being ticked off when I initially signed up for DirecTV- I made sure they had (at that time) Versus as part of their lineup. They listed Versus among their channels in the package I wanted. Being it the onset of playoff hockey, Versus was a must. Lo and behold, I find out after I get everything hooked up that they've been on an ongoing contract dispute and that I was going to be without my playoff hockey. I know these things happen with every provider, but bottom line, Dish is a little cheaper for what I need. I should feel no shame for paying less and yet still being able to watch channels I want like Palladia, and Comedy Central.

[MrBig]

I can care less about AMC.

How much less?

[Krawk]

How much less?

Good question - I for one watch AMC, be it a CSI Miami rerun or some movie I just haven't see in awhile. It's scary when you see a mid to late 80's movie on there. American Movie CLASSICS huh. I guess so, cars become classics at that age then antiques.
Still, my best point is to take your current bill and triple it or increase it *just* 40 percent and then say with a straight face the content provider and the networks had a fair negotiation.

[darkdaze73]

Good question - I for one watch AMC, be it a CSI Miami rerun or some movie I just haven't see in awhile. It's scary when you see a mid to late 80's movie on there. American Movie CLASSICS huh. I guess so, cars become classics at that age then antiques.
Still, my best point is to take your current bill and triple it or increase it *just* 40 percent and then say with a straight face the content provider and the networks had a fair negotiation.

Don't know if you visit the slickdeals site or not, but there was a super long thread while the whole Dtv/Viacom thing was going on. People in the true slickdeals fashion were taking full advantage of the situation and calling Dtv seeing what they could get for free. Some, well many were calling multiple times until they received what the last person claimed to have gotten.

And while I would have loved to have some knocked off my bill or received some more free premium movie channels, even though it's currently not that much since I only recently signed back up and receiving the new customer discounts; I just did not want it to look as though I were supporting Viacom's stance.

Beyond Nick(for my daughter) and the occasional program on Spike, there is nothing Viacom offers on that I care to watch. Although I have watched the Palladia channel during some free preview weekends. But I would not watch it enough to justify bumping my package up just to get it.

Plus I read somewhere that Viacom was wanting Dtv to pay something like $500 million for epix. Luckily Dtv did not give in to that.