Items tagged with viacom

PlayStation Vue is dropping a few things, and some subscribers are likely to be unhappy. All Viacom-owned networks, including Comedy Central, Spike, and MTV, will no longer be available on PlayStation Vue. Vue will cut the stations at 12:01am EST on Friday, November 11th. According to Sony, “As part of our ongoing... Read more...
At this point, it's not really a question of whether the television industry will be massively disrupted, but when. Analysts have been expecting Apple to take the lead, but it has been smaller outfits such as Roku and Hulu changing things up. But, there's still no true replacement for pay-TV, at least not yet, as most channels that offer online... Read more...
TV is about to get a lot more social. Twitter has made no bones about its ambitions to become the go-to source when it comes to mapping out popularity of television programming, and now, Viacom + Twitter have announced a partnership to deliver social video advertising campaigns around the most popular shows and... Read more...
Amazon is serious about shoring up its catalog of streaming titles, so much so that it went and cut its biggest check ever for a subscription-streaming license. The Prime video provider struck a deal with Viacom, forking over more than $200 million to secure the rights to hundreds of kids' shows, including the wildly... Read more...
Intel is getting into the TV business, that much we already knew. But how soon? That's a question that's seemingly close to being answered. According to a new Bloomberg report, Intel -- the chip-making giant -- is "making progress in talks with Time Warner, NBC Universal and Viacom to obtain TV shows and films for a... Read more...
Good news for DirecTV customers who have been paying for over two dozen blacked-out channels for the last week or so (seriously DirectTV, can we get some money back on our next bill for that mess?): Viacom and DirecTV have settled their dispute, and Viacom has restored 17 of the 26 channels it blocked when a... Read more...
Usually, when industry titans do battle, it’s a good thing for consumers (patent wars notwithstanding). Companies scramble to outdo each other, one-upping the competition’s latest product and forcing down prices, and begging for our loyalty and money. In the TV world, unfortunately, the sniping and... Read more...
Taxpayers in the United States could soon be stuck footing the bill for some very costly copyright infringement enforcement. For those that don't know, the PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or Senate Bill S.968) is a piece of... Read more...
After some six weeks on the auction block, beleagured Blockbuster has found a buyer. The Dish Network has agreed to purchase its erstwhile competitor. The company won the auction with a bid of some $320 million and expects to pay ~$228 million once other transaction adjustments are completed. The purchase process will reportedly be finished... Read more...
Hulu has struck a content deal with Viacom that returns "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" to Hulu.com and brings shows from other networks to the subscription service, Hulu Plus. At the same time, Hulu's CEO hinted that the days of fully free access to the service might be numbered. The agreement covers shows on Comedy... Read more...
YouTube has won the lawsuit filed against it by Viacom, over copyright infringement. That said, Viacom has promised to appeal. YouTube had used the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as its defense, and U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton agreed. Those provisions protect sites and ISPs against any copyright... Read more...
We don't enjoy saying that the first ball has dropped here, but it sure seems that way. Hulu, which was called by NBC an "evil plan to destroy the world," might just be destroying NBC's hope of raking in any serious profits. The site delivers all sorts of television programs to online viewers at no cost, only... Read more...
Earlier we reported a court decision that handed over all YouTube user data to Viacom. As we know Viacom and YouTube are enmeshed in a lawsuit over copyrighted material uploaded to YouTube. The information was to assist Viacom in its case, but it was unclear why they needed user data to prove the amount of copyrighted material uploaded or... Read more...
Google has been ordered to turn over their logs of user activity on their YouTube site to Viacom. Viacom is suing Google over copyright infringement, and wishes to see how many YouTube users actually look at Viacom copyrighted material on the video service, then compare it to the amount of traffic any given non-copyrighted video might garner,... Read more...
Viacom filed suit against YouTube last year, alleging that YouTube wasn't taking sufficient measures to ensure that copyrighted material wasn't being freely distributed by the YouTube community.  YouTube seems to have taken complaints from Viacom and others seriously, and has developed an anti-piracy technology that requires copyright... Read more...
Viacom, purveyors of fine video entertainment such as SpongeBob Squarepants, among many others, is not happy. They've been in negotiations with YouTube's parent company, Google, to allow their content to appear for a cut of revenue. They've decided to go the direct route instead: Sue Google for a billion dollars worth of copyright... Read more...
Gamers around the world will rejoice in the news that Viacom is purchasing XFire, a free program that automatically keeps track of when and where gamers are playing PC games online and lets their friends join them, for $102 million. We are very pleased to announce that Xfire has entered... Read more...