Time Warner & Viacom Make Peace for 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  As you might have seen Viacom was heavily promoting that all 19 of their channels were in danger of being removed from Time Warner Cable systems at the stroke of Midnight Eastern Time.

Midnight has come and gone on the East Coast and the channels are still available on Time Warner cable systems.  According to the Associated Press a last minute deal was reached between Vacom and Time Warner.  Of course as these things go no details of the deal were released.

Glad to see this deal get done without the removal of the channels, and I am also glad that we no longer have to see the annoying crawl on the Viacom channels. 

New HD for Dish in 2009

Another surprise what that Dish Network emailed its retailers letting them know that more national HD was coming to Dish Network in 2009.

The notice read as follows:

“HD National Channels Currently Planned to Launch in the Future! – One of DISH Network’s main strategies is to continue improving our HD channel offerings. Here is a list of HD national channels we currently plan on launching in 2009!”

The channels listed are BET, Comedy Central, CMT, Crime & Investigation, Fashion TV, FX, MTV, Nickelodeon, SHOTO, Showtime Extreme, Showtime (West) HD, SPEED, Spike TV & VH-1.

Of course in typical Dish Network style the announcement did not say when those new HD channels would be coming.

Dish fell short of its goal of 150 national HD channels in 2008.  With the year just starting these channels would make many folks forget the missed deadline.

With that I am off to bed, again HAPPY NEW YEAR and THANK YOU for visiting MultiChannel.COM and reading this first edition of “The Satellite Dish” for 2009!