There's a tiny bit of good news for Dish Network subscribers, but there's nothing good to report on the DirecTV front. As a matter of fact, there's even more bad news.
AMC, which has been dropped from the Dish lineup, has announced that Dish subscribers will be able to live stream the fifth-season premiere of "Breaking Bad" on Sunday, July 15, at 8 p.m., MDT.
It's just for Dish subscribers, and you'll have to register at amctv.com/breakingbad4dish beginning Friday, July 13, at 1 p.m. MT.
And this clearly isn't going to happen every week. It's just another shot being fired in the war between the two sides. The channel released this statement:
"AMC wants its loyal Dish viewers to experience the excitement of the 'Breaking Bad' premiere at the same time as their friends and neighbors, and we want to give DISH customers an extra week to switch providers so they can enjoy the rest of the season."
As for any resolution to the the dispute that has taken AMC, IFC and WEtv off Dish, it's not looking good. The two sides can't even agree what the dispute is about - Dish says it's over the fees AMC is demanding; AMC maintains it's because of an unrelated lawsuit involving its former parent company and Dish.
It's very clear, however, what Viacom and DirecTV are fighting over - money. Viacom wants more than DirecTV is willing to pay.
As a result, 26 Viacom-owned cable networks - including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, Logo and TV Land - are no longer on DirecTV.
The two sides cannot agree, however, whose fault it is that the channels disappeared on Tuesday night. Viacom says they were dropped without warning; DirecTV claims Viacom failed to respond to its request to keep the channels on while the two sides continued to negotiate, so it was "forced" to drop them.
According to Derek Chang, DirecTV's executive vice president of content, Viacom is asking for a 30 percent increase for its channels. Viacom, in turn, said that amounts to "an increase of only a couple of pennies per day, per subscriber."
Chang also complained that most of Viacom's programming is also available online for free, lowering its value.
As a matter of fact, Viacom has shut down free access to its programming - so DirecTV subscribers hoping to catch the next episode of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" or MTV's "Teen Wolf" are out of luck. And, Viacom hopes, they'll put more pressure on the satellite provider.
