Media giant Viacom Inc. is threatening to pull Spike TV, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and 16 other channels from Time Warner Cable Inc. if a new carriage fee deal is not agreed upon by midnight tonight.

Most notably for wrestling and MMA fans, Spike TV televises TNA Impact, as well as UFC programming including UFC Unleashed and The Ultimate Fighter.

The move is the result of a dispute between Time Warner, the nation's second largest cable provider, and Viacom.

Viacom has asked Time Warner for fee increases. That is not in dispute.

What is in dispute is the way the increases are portrayed.

Time Warner portrays the increases as "between 22 and 36 percent per channel, adding up to tens of millions of dollars per year, an amount that could increase customers' cable bills".

Viacom replied in a statement that the increases would "cost less than 25 cents a month per subscriber...and that Americans spend a fifth of their TV time watching Viacom shows but its fees make up less than 2.5 percent of the Time Warner cable bill".

A part of the dispute is that some of the popular shows on Viacom properties are rerun on Web sites where Viacom collects advertising revenue that it does not share with Time Warner.

The cable channels owned by Viacom that would be affected include Spike TV, Comedy Central, TV Land, BET, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Noggin, The N, Nick at Nite, TV Land, MTV, MTV2, mtvU, MTV Tr3s, Harmonix, VH1, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, and CMT Logo.

Shows affected would include TNA Impact, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and The Hills.

Credit:  http://www.pwbts.com/messages/24349.htm

This stinks, I have Time Warner Cable....