AT&T Owned DirecTV/Now In A Mess With Viacom

And there’s not a lot that can be done.

On the same week in which Warner Bros. President Kevin Tsujihara stepped down after a behind-the-scenes affair went public, corporate parent AT&T has started to flex it’s muscle as it pertains to TV networks being kicked off the various media delivery services that the Tcom giant now owns. Last week, DirecTV Now removed channels from Viacom, Discovery, and AMC from their online streaming services and this week a showdown between Viacom and AT&T is getting even uglier as DirecTV satellite offerings may soon remove the likes of Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, and countless others if a new carriage deal isn’t in place by Friday.

Like usual, both sides are claiming the other side is being greedy with their negotiations and Viacom has even started launching a commercial campaign to let it’s viewers know of the impending consequences if a deal doesn’t happen. So get ready DirecTV-viewing folks. You could soon be losing a mess of channels sooner rather than later. As it stands now, Viacom is without a premium streaming service, instead, focusing it’s efforts on the recent acquisition of PlutoTV which is an ad-supported streaming model that’s expected to launch internationally. That along with renewed focuses on social channels like Youtube sees the media conglomerate going in a completely different direction than say Disney or WarnerMedia with their soon to come streaming offerings.