We continue negotiating to renew a contract that expires at midnight, this Friday, Dec. 31, and covers a number of cable TV networks owned by Viacom, a New-York based media conglomerate. The affected channels are listed at the end of this email.

Unfortunately, despite a challenging economic environment, Viacom wants a more than 20% overall increase in what they’re paid, which includes significant payment for a new network with R-rated programming that you have not requested and may not want.

As contract deadlines draw near, Viacom has a history of using scare tactics. For instance, two years ago, with the customers of another cable company, Viacom exploited some of its own characters, like Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants, depicting them as crying over the prospect of being taken “off the air.” Those tactics were misleading and unfair. First, only Viacom would force its programming “off the air.” Second, Viacom tried to leverage its children’s programming to extract higher payments.

(For illustrations of Viacom’s scare tactics, follow this link, http://pics.livejournal.com/coryoconnor/pic/005c62wb, or this one, http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/via ... raise.html.)

Hopefully, Viacom will forego such measures and instead negotiate with us in good faith to establish a new contract with fair and reasonable terms for you.

In the unusual event these negotiations are unsuccessful and Viacom removes its channels, we reiterate our pledge to reduce your bill by the cost of the affected channels for whatever length of time they are unavailable.

Although we have made it clear to Viacom that their recent offers are neither fair nor reasonable, they continue to seek a significant overall increase in what they're paid, still at more than 20% and still demanding payment for a new channel with R-rated programming that our customers have not requested and many of them do not want.

In the meantime, customers have asked us, if we lose some Viacom channels, can we keep others. We would like to do that, but every Viacom offer so far has demanded payment for their new network with R-rated programming, and they have never made a realistic offer for only some of their channels.

For instance:

* If we wanted to keep only Nickelodeon, the cost for that one channel would be three times more than what Viacom charges today for seven of their channels.

* If we wanted to keep Nickelodeon, TV Land, MTV, and Comedy Central, the cost of those four channels would be five times more than what Viacom charges today for twenty channels, including their digital channels. (Imagine the price of a gallon of gas increasing five times, from around $2.80 to $14.)

Clearly, Viacom is attempting to leverage its current channels, including its children's programming, to force a significant increase in what they're paid and a new network with R-rated programming.

Most embarrassingly for Viacom, court documents revealed in in March that at the same time that it was suing Google and YouTube, Viacom was itself uploading its content in secret and trying to make it look stolen - so that people would be more interested in it.

One excerpt from the documents filed by YouTube was particularly notable for the embarrassment caused: "Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself."

Suddenlink and Viacom are pleased to announce that they’ve reached an agreement in principle on a long-term contract. Viacom channels, listed below, will continue to be carried by Suddenlink. In addition, EPIX will be made available to Suddenlink customers in the next few months.

EPIX provides consumers with the latest Hollywood movies, 15,000 films from three of the top motion picture libraries and cutting-edge original programming on television, on demand and online, exclusively in HD and SD.

Suddenlink wants to thank its customers for their patience and support during these negotiations and assure them that, as a result of this agreement, there will be no changes to the recently announced rate adjustments for Suddenlink’s most-popular services; the company will absorb any difference and customers will have a choice about whether or not they want EPIX.

In addition to EPIX, the new agreement covers all of the Viacom networks included under the prior agreement. Of those networks, the seven typically featured on Suddenlink’s widely available Expanded Basic Service are MTV, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Comedy Central, Spike TV, VH1, CMT. The others are featured on optional digital services and include Logo, Palladia HD, Nick Jr., TeenNick, NickToons, Nick2, MTV Hits, MTV2, MTV Jams, Tr3s, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, and CMT Pure Country.