Viacom, a major TV content provider, and DirecTV, a major satellite TV distributor, are fighting it out over how much DirecTV has to pay Viacom. The result is that Viacom turned off 26 of its channels including MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon, that’s it’s been providing DirecTV. That’s bad news for DirecTV customers. Then, it got worse. Viacom started blocking some of its most popular shows content to Internet TV watchers as well.
For example, you can no longer watch full episodes of The Daily Show from the Comedy Central Web sites. Instead, when you try to watch say the latest full episode of The Colbert Report, you’re presented with a Flash ad blaming DirecTV for dropping the channels and telling viewers to call DirecTV and demand that they settle with Viacom.
Really Viacom? Really?