Consumerist reader Frank noticed that the shows on Nickelodeon didn’t match what was showing up on his TiVo schedule. He’d try to record Dora the Explorer and end up with Spongebob. Thinking it must be an issue with TiVo, he checked against what was on TVguide.com and found that they also had incorrect info. [More]
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YouTube Beats Viacom In $1B Copyright Lawsuit
By 6.24.10
Sorry Viacom! A judge has handed YouTube a victory in the $1 billion copyright lawsuit that the entertainment company brought against Google/YouTube. Viacom’s position was that YouTube had the responsibility to immediately remove all copyrighted materials. YouTube said it only had to comply with takedown requests. [More]
Viacom's Redstone: All Newspapers Dead In Two Years
By 5.4.10
Sumner Redstone, the boss of Viacom and CBS, has gazed into his crystal ball, and what he sees may not cheer up anyone in the newspaper business — though it may, conveniently, be good news for broadcasters. According to Redstone, “there won’t be any newspapers in two years.” [More]
YouTube: Viacom Uploaded Some Of The Videos They're Suing Us Over
By 3.19.10
It’s a showdown of new media and sorta-old media as YouTube defends itself against Viacom in the TV leviathan’s billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against the site that showed the world that cats can indeed play the piano. [More]
No More Daily Show Or Colbert Report On Hulu
By 3.2.10
The New York Times is reporting that Viacom plans to pull its Comedy Central programming from Hulu next week because it can’t reach an agreement with the video site on compensation. In a post today on its blog, a Hulu executive notes that Hulu was “unable to secure the rights to extend these shows,” and that they’ll be gone as of 11:59 pm PST next Tuesday, March 9th. After that, you can continue watching them on TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation.com. [More]
MTV Stops Pretending They Still Show Music
By 2.10.10
Nearly 18 years after MTV aired the first episode of The Real World, opening the floodgates that would let in the likes of Laguna Beach, The Hills, Jersey Shore and countless other non-music programs, the original 24-hour music channel has finally admitted that, well… it just really doesn’t show music anymore, and it’s updating its logo to reflect this sad fact. [More]
New Year's Surprise For TWC Customers: No More Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon…
By 12.31.08
Update: A deal has been reached. Crisis averted. Viacom is demanding that Time Warner Cable pay more for the right to broadcast its networks, but TWC has refused. Tonight at midnight, 13.3 million subscribers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Cleveland will feel the effects of the stalemate first hand when Viacom makes good on its threat to pull all of its networks from TWC. Translation: no more “The Daily Show,” “Dora the Explorer,” “The Colbert Report,” “The Hills,” etc. But hey, there’s always Hulu and BitTorrent, right?
Viacom Retracts Fraudulent Ownership Claims On Indie Filmmaker's YouTube Clip
By 7.30.08
Last week we told you about how Viacom was sending fraudulent ownership claims to indie filmmakers on YouTube. A few days after our post went up about how they were doing this to animator Joanna Davidovich, a Viacom executive got in touch with her to explain what happened.
Viacom Fraudulently Claims Ownership Of Indie Filmmakers' YouTube Clips
By 7.22.08
Viacom is sending bogus copyright ownership claims and illegal posting notices to independent filmmakers posting their own movies on YouTube. These films contain not one iota of Viacom content. Take, for instance, this lovely short animation, “Juxtaposer,” made by Joanna Davidovich for her senior project. It’s completely her original creation. She has copyrighted it and says that she “only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive.” Yet, the media corporation saw fit to have YouTube tell Joanna, “Viacom has claimed some or all audio and visual content in your video.”
Study: Baby Boomers Are "Savvy Shoppers" Who Brand-Jump More Than Younger Generations
By 7.9.08
It’s time once again to play Categorize The Shopping Public, this time using a survey commissioned by TV Land to convince advertisers that its Boomer-centric programming is relevant. If you or someone you know is between the ages of 40-59, you won’t want to miss this very important message—but to summarize it for the ADD crowd, it seems younger folks are (slightly) more likely to choose a brand based on fashion and hype, whereas Boomers are (slightly) less brand-loyal and seek greater value. This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that younger consumers are savvier shoppers, and gives Boomers something to gloat over—before they forget what it is they’re gloating about. Ha ha! Old people are so old!
Judge Orders Google To Turn Over All YouTube User Data To Viacom
By 7.3.08
Wired’s Threat Level blog says that the judge in the Viacom/Google lawsuit has made a ruling forcing Google to turn over “every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses,” to Viacom.
The Devil Is In The Fine Print
By 10.25.06
Viacom workers have to agree that Viacom owns anything they ever make in the “universe,” in, “perpetuity.” Use of the Yahoo! Toolbar expressly prohibits use of the technology to operate nuclear facilities.
