Time-Warner Caves in Negotiations with Spongebob, Dora

At left, we have SpongeBob, a Nickelodeon character shown in the process of eating Manhattan. Those of you with children may have noticed an annoying scroll covering up SpongeBob’s stick legs during yesterday’s broadcast. Those of you who get your news from sources other than this blog might have noticed full-page ads in major newspapers (like those shown here and here) encouraging readers to pressure Time-Warner to come to the bargaining table so that Nickelodeon and 18 other Viacom-owned channels would not be removed from Time-Warner’s offerings. Those of you who watched one of the Viacom channels recently probably saw this ad.

Well, the campaign seems to have worked. In any case, The Wall Street Journal reports today that Time-Warner and Viacom have reached a new deal. Viacom had been seeking a 12% increase in carriage fees, which would have increased subscriber fees by 23 cents/month. Viacom felt its fee was out of sync with the proportion of viewers it attracted through its package of channels. The details of the deal were not disclosed, but I’m sure many parents are breathing a sigh of relief. In addition, something would have been grossly out of joint if New York cable viewers could not tune in to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

[Jeremy Telman]