(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - Alaska independent pay TV providers have banded together in negotiations with one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, Viacom. Represented by the National Cable Television Cooperative, KPU, GCI and MTA are among more than 700 small, independent pay TV operators that are at risk of losing Viacom’s networks due to stalled negotiations.

If a deal is not made by April 1, Viacom’s networks, including TV Land, Spike, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, CMT and others, will be pulled from more than 5 million subscribers across the country. In Alaska, an estimated 130,000 subscribers would be affected statewide including KPU and GCI customers in Ketchikan.

“We’ve unified to fight for Alaskans and to work toward a fair, long-term agreement that keeps prices stable for our customers. While we are restricted from talking about specific rates, Viacom is demanding a rate that is 40 times the rate of inflation,” said Kim Simpson, KPU’s Division Manager of Sales and Marketing. Simpson compared it to the price of gas jumping overnight from $3.50 a gallon to $6. Simpson noted, “If we were to simply pass-through Viacom’s proposed price increases, we would have to raise every one of our customer’s TV bills by $100 per year just in the first year alone”.

The National Cable Television Cooperative is negotiating on behalf of small cable providers to provide the best value and leverage for these local companies and their subscribers.

“It’s unfortunate that Viacom feels it necessary to withhold programming from consumers to try and pressure small operators. We want our customers to know that fees from the all the networks we carry account for the bulk of the monthly TV bill. Our goal is to protect our customers.  In the meantime, we apologize to our customers in advance if Viacom causes some TV networks to be unavailable.  Should that occur, we hope the outage will be of limited duration,” added Simpson. 

Source of News: 

KPU Telecommunications
www.kputel.com

KPU is a locally/municipally-owned telecommunications company in Ketchikan, Alaska. KPU delivers high speed Internet, high definition digital television, data-hosting, high-speed transport, cloud-business services, long-distance and local telephone service....

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