Time Warner vs MTV

MTV Networks and Time Warner Cable’s dispute is triggered by the free fall in advertising spending and the misery of television programmers to increase revenues from distribution fees.

This dispute might result in MTVN pulling out its 19 channels from Time Warner across the country on the first day of this year. "We sympathize with the fact that Viacom's advertising business is suffering and that their networks' ratings have largely been declining," Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said Wednesday in a statement. "However, we can't abide their attempt to make up their lost revenue on the backs of Time Warner Cable customers."

Another thing that is also stimulating the fight is a growing hostility by cable operators toward programmers. Cable operators watched as programmers stepped up on giving full episodes of shows to video Web sites such as Sling.com and Joost for the past few years. Most of the time cable guys don’t get anything while programmers share advertising revenues from those sites.

Britt has shown support with the cable operators as he called out on getting more digital rights to them. He said that due to the fact that Time Warner Cable subscribes pay for shows through their monthly bills, they should receive the programs on any platform they want either on web or through video on demand.

As companies negotiate on distribution deals, streaming TV programs on their own high-speed Internet services would surely become a bigger issue. MTVN will face another negotiation on January when its current agreement will satellite service Dish Network expires. They already negotiated with Comcast, the largest cable operator in the nation, rights to some shows for its video portal, Fancast.

Pressure for programmers

Negotiating strategies are just starting as like any distribution deals. David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications is trying to set a tone before the new distribution deals for his collection of cable channels like TLC, Animal Planet and Discovery. Zaslav said he doesn’t believe there is good business model for full episodes of TV shows online.

But given the pressures the depressing advertising climate is placing on programmers, they might just be willing to give cable operators what they want in order to collect their asking price on distribution fees.