... they're always going on. You see them everywhere - there's McDonald's vs. Burger King. Nintendo (GameCube) vs. Sony (Playstation). Blockbuster vs. Hollywood Video (and anyone else who dares rent movies) Microsoft vs. The Justice Department (oh yes, the government is a corporation...anyone who thinks differently is just fooling themselves). There's Disney vs... well, itself (with Eisner in charge, how can it be any other way?)

And now there was Echostar (Dish Network) vs. Viacom (CBS and the MTV networks). But this was more like a war than those nice gentle rivalries I mentioned before. Most of this was written prior to this morning, when the dispute was finally settled, so take it for what it is at the time that I wrote it.

Echostar and Viacom had a contract renegotiation going on regarding 15 specific markets for rebroadcast of CBS channels. But supposedly Viacom would only sign those contracts if Echostar agreed to carry 13 other channels that Echostar (and their CEO) thinks would have little or no value to Dish subscribers.

Disclaimer: I *am* a Dish subscriber. And an unhappy one at the moment too, since my kids and I love to watch Rugrats and Spongebob Squarepants, and I am an avid (and previously admitted here) CSI addict. And y'all knew I wouldn't be away for long, because someone had to do something stupid that would bring me back here.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain, since Viacom owns BlockBuster – and many of you know how much I hate BlockBuster (for personal *and* professional reasons). In that respect, I should be grudgingly happy that this is happening, but I’m not because it’s an entirely different business unit, and Viacom is showing some good judgment by spinning BlockBuster off into their own little world shortly. But that’s neither here nor there, nor relevant to this discussion… so…

A couple of the channels that are part of this new contract would be NickToons, Oxygen, CBS Kids... things like that. I don't know about you, but I would watch NickToons and probably Oxygen. They state that there are too many cartoon channels - can you really have too many cartoon stations? I don't think so - just look at my Saturday morning cartoon column of a couple of days ago. There are depths that I have not yet plumbed here about my love of animation. Just wait until I get started on Disney past and present one of these days. Then you’ll really understand how important animation is to me.

When I read the story on Yahoo on Tuesday, I was in mild shock already. This sent me on a ranting bender. Just days before March Madness, while Survivor is still causing a frenzy among people, where CSI is the top rated drama on television, Echostar pulls the plug on CBS and Viacom programming. That's not what Charlie Ergen (the CEO of Echostar) is saying, though. He says that Viacom is being unreasonable and that *they* turned off the signal after the fourth extension expired from a contract that ran out on Dec 31, 2003. Funny, that's not what the Dish Network operator I spoke to said. He backed up that it was Echostar who turned it off.

Ergen plays dirty. Ok, some of you may be asking me what corporation doesn't when it comes to the bottom line in negotiations, but Ergen plays REALLY dirty. This isn't the first time that he's played this game with a broadcaster, and it probably won't be the last. But this one is certainly the messiest. He's got a "Charlie Chat" running on all of the blacked out channels that scrolls the phone numbers of Viacom and MTV Networks so that you can call them and complain about this service interruption. If you press the info button on your local CBS channel, he gives you the name and number of the general manager for the station so that you can call *them* and complain. He blacks out the screen and puts up in big bright white bold letters that Viacom is being unreasonable.

I don't see why Viacom should be reasonable in negotiations after the likes of this media game of Charlie's.

Dish Network says that they've added stations in a free preview mode for the duration of this situation. Things that they state are suitable alternatives to the missing stations. That's a funny one. I'm still laughing over it. I don't see how Country Music Television, FUSE, and Toon Disney are free previews and suitable alternatives for MTV and Nickelodeon when I already had those stations as part of my Dish 120 package. I further love the fact that they state they've turned on new channels, when that clearly is *not* what I'm seeing in my onscreen program guide. There is *no* channel 347 – there’s a channel 342, and a 350, but no 347. And I would notice if it were turned on between those two as well, since the 300 block is Premium Movie Channels such as HBO and ShowTime, and those are colored red because I don’t subscribe to them.

Here’s something I don’t get… why is Nick@Nite and SpikeTV still active on my dish? They’re Viacom channels. Maybe I'm just special. Then again, we knew that already. So let's continue on...

Dish Network thinks that they're going to be making a big dent in Viacom's bottom line by turning their stations off and thereby keeping viewers from watching their programs and supporting their advertisers. Last time I checked, Cialis and Viagra commercials are on *all* the stations out there. Dish, actually, is doing something that may ultimately hurt them - many of the letters that Ergen was faced with during the "Charlie Chat" were people who stated that if this doesn't end they're going to find another alternative. He acknowledged that this was a regular "theme" with viewers who wrote in. Maybe he should listen to his paying customers who are threatening to leave.

It's going to be a new "trend" instead of a “theme” if the blackout continues. In a market where Dish Network represents 43% of the satellite owners, they're still losing market share to DirecTV. They're playing with fire here, because it sounds like that trend will continue if they manage to alienate Viacom with this situation. This, in my opinion, isn't going to make future contract negotiations with Viacom any easier for Charlie and the gang of lawyers at Dish Network. In the long run, it will ultimately be bad for Dish Network.

The claims are that they're doing this in the best interest of the customer - so as not to have to raise the subscription rates by passing on the (claimed by Dish) exorbitant cost that Viacom is going to charge them for the channels, and the "no value-add" channels that Viacom will (supposedly) force them to carry. They just raised the rates on customers, so what's another rate hike? Cable companies do it all the time. Heck, Dish promised it's subscribers that they weren't going to raise rates until 2005, and they haven't kept that promise - that's for sure. Oh wait, the fine print said that that was for the Dish Top 150 customers - the highest paying bracket of customers. No wonder my rates have gone up - never mind that I've been a subscriber for 6 years, right? Dish isn't going to benefit from this at all, unless they manage to come out on top, and I don’t think that *anyone* is going to come out on top – least of all the paying customers.

That brings me back to rates and refunds. That's right, refunds. Dish says they're going to give a credit to all the local network customers who pay $4.99 a month for those channels - a credit of $1 per month for as long (or short) as this drags out. Package customers get another $1 off every month. Whoohoo! I get $2 a month credit for losing 8 channels. May I remind y'all that I paid up in full for the next year back in December? I think they should be prorating my package cost over each day that the service is gone and give me a credit for the 8 channels that I've lost access to. They're violating *my* service agreement after all. It's enough for me to want to break my programming commitment for the year - but they're stating that all programming commitments will stay in place. I think Dish is going to be giving lots of refunds to customers who leave the service no matter what they say about programming commitments.

We all know the golden rule about word of mouth too, right? One good experience gets shared with one person... a bad experience gets shared with 10. Multiply that by the Internet factor - I bet I'm not the only person who has a blog about this running somewhere in the world. Or on a message board. Or in a chat room.

There's also that wonderful whine about Dish Network being the one to deliver more new customers to Viacom than their 4 competitors combined, and that they're going to miss out because Dish Network has experienced the greatest amount of subscriber growth of any of the other satellite distributors. You know, I hear that every single year. I wonder who twists the numbers for Charlie to make it look like that, or if he actually does that himself?

Dish Network really is holding the viewer hostage to their decisions about this - especially the ones who can't get the local stations via an antenna either because they can't put an antenna on top of their house due to some preservation of the neighborhood, or because of tall trees, mountains, and power lines that degrade the signal badly. I fall under both of these categories, unfortunately for me - a rabbit ears is all I can use, and I'd be better off watching a blank screen for an hour rather than try and decipher static mumbling and snow.

I don't pay to watch snow... I pay to watch SHOWS. But apparently, Dish won't even let me do that. Or, at least, they won't let me watch the shows I want to on certain networks. Now, if you believe dear ole Charlie, as I stated before, it’s Viacom that’s doing this to the viewers. There are a great many people who hate big huge corporations that make millions of dollars a minute on their banked cash interest alone who are going to happily believe that it’s Viacom’s fault. Viacom even says that they have wonderful solid relationships with other vendors, just not with Dish Network. Oh, and I forgot – they also mention that Dish Network is being ludicrous, demanding, and files frivolous lawsuits for which they’ve been admonished or sanctioned by many a judge. Oh, and that the only thing they can do for the tens of thousands of Dish Network customers who are calling them is to redirect them to the “excellent alternative TV distribution services” that are available. Way to go Viacom at being the upstanding wronged party... they decided to fall right into Charlie's little power trippin' ego game here. That's not going to win them any fans either.

This whole game about who’s right and who’s wrong, and who is going to hurt who reminds me of that movie WarGames and the lesson that Joshua (the mainframe computer’s artificial intelligence) learns about war at the end of the movie: The only winning move is not to play…

…I guess the folks at Dish Network and Viacom weren't paying attention when that movie was on.