
Hopefully, subscribers to DirecTV are enjoying all the fun activities of summer, because they don’t have much to watch when they’re at home. As of July 10th, Viacom pulled 17 of its cable channels from DirecTV, depriving almost 20 million viewers of access to some of their favorite shows.
Channels affected include Comedy Central, BET, CMT, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, NickToons, Spike and TV Land. Some of the shows being blacked out are “Teen Wolf,” “Workaholics,” Awkward,” Tosh.O” , “The Soul Man”, and “Love & Hip Hop”.
So what’s the beef? Money, of course. The seven-year deal between DirecTV and Viacom has expired and the two companies have not yet been able to agree to terms on programming fees.
Among those millions missing their shows are several celebs that have vented their frustrations via Twitter. One was Khloe Kardashian, whose own show isn’t affected by the blackout, but was still irked by the dispute. “I love to know I’m not the only one who is annoyed by this… So many of you guys are irritated too,” she tweeted, adding, “SpongeBob I will miss you!”
Another tweet came from Blake Anderson of Comedy Central: “Workaholics and DIRECTV officially have beef.”
From Daniel Tosh: “lets all pray this viacom/directv beef gets squashed by next week.”
Definitely irked by the blackout was Houston Rockets star Patrick Patterson, who tweeted, “Thank you #Viacom for ruining my Direct-Tv experience.”
Actress and comic Wanda Sykes spoke for many harried moms when she posted, “Hey DirectTv, how am I going to explain to my kids that they can’t watch “BubbleGuppies?” They don’t know Viacom.”
Meanwhile, Viacom and DirecTV have been publicly lashing out at each other on Twitter as well, retweeting fan opinions of the blackout, and starting their own trending topics like #DirecTVhasmyback.
Hopefully, the two companies will reach an agreement soon.
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