Knick-Knack Paddy Wack!

Ha-ha-ha: I update my service yesterday and today's headlines reveal that T-W Cable is at war with Viacom, who wants more revenue for providing their channels to T-W for viewing pleasure. Viacom says it "only" amounts to about 35 cents per customer per month, but T-W is vowing to fight the good fight, dropping the channels from its line-up and adjusting customer's bills to reflect that programming change. Thirty-five cents isn't much, but it's the principle, right?

The ironic part is that none of the channels being dropped, with the exception of the channel that hosts Stephen Colbert and John Daly, are channels I watch, so it could benefit my bill by thirty-five cents; however, I betcha that if Viacom wins the price war, MY cable bill will go up and not by "only" thirty-five cents!

I HATE paying for channels I never watch, including all of the Spanish language stations, all of the children's networks, the shopping shows, the religious programs, all of the BET genre shows, including VH-1, 2, and whatever. I also am selective about the sports I watch, which does NOT include endless hours of golf, tennis, auto racing, boxing, wrestling, or soccer in Spanish (unless I'm in the mood for some bloodsport). As I told the CSR when arranging my new service, there are 30+ channels that I resent the hell out of paying for because they are channels I NEVER watch and have to manually program out of the line-up, which is a further irritant.

So, we'll see. It's been just about 24 hours and already there are issues.

Updating: it's New Year's Day and the scheduled black-out of the Viacom channels did not occur. T-W and Viacom settled their differences. Now subscribers wait to see how much we'll all pay for the settlement.