Viacom

DirecTV’s 20M customers have their MTV — and 16 other Viacom channels — again. The companies said this morning that they’ve resolved their 10-day contract dispute, which took more channels from more consumers than any other fight so far between a pay TV distributor and programmer.

Both companies say they’re not likely to come to an agreement in their carriage conflict any time soon. Viacom issued a resigned-sounding statement on Wednesday afternoon, saying that the standoff could go on “indefinitely.” DirecTV said that the dispute centers on carriage of Viacom’s premium channel, EPIX.

There’s a new crisis in Bikini Bottom. Ratings for Viacom-owned Nickelodeon and other cable channels are sinking fast in a blackout that has kept DirecTV’s 20 million customers from watching SpongeBob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer and other popular shows.

Viacom and DirecTV are still trying to hammer out a new deal that will bring MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and more than a dozen other channels back to the satellite broadcaster. But in between the talks, the two sides are still taking shots at each other.

DirecTV had been telling subscribers they could just watch many Viacom shows for free on its own websites.

The entertainment conglomerate and the satellite TV giant failed to reach a new carriage agreement before midnight Tuesday.

Viacom says in a blog post that DirecTV’s 20 million subscribers could lose its 26 channels — including Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central — at midnight tonight unless there’s more progress in their talks for a new carriage deal.

Tuesday, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it has begun buying stock in Viacom Inc., controlled by billionaire Sumner Redstone. Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway, in a filing with the SEC, said that during the first three months of the year it had acquired nearly 1.6 million shares in Viacom — a stake worth $75.5 million.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed a lower court’s decision to throw out a $1 billion lawsuit that was filed against YouTube by Viacom and other media companies five years ago.

Viacom has been testing an ad sales offering called Surround Sound that will let brands bundle audience-targeted TV buys with a digital campaign aimed at the same consumer segment that would span online video, display, mobile and email advertising.

Amazon.com Inc is about to announce a Web video deal with Viacom Inc in what sources said was one of the last steps in a plan to launch a standalone subscription service to compete with Netflix Inc. The online retailer will unveil the deal as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Don’t tell Wells Fargo Securities’ Marci Ryvicker that Big Media are washed up as infotainment power shifts to tech giants such as Google and Apple. The long-time analyst of broadcasting and pay TV companies says that CBS, News Corp., and Time Warner are likely to outperform the overall market while Disney and Viacom keep pace.

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman lobbed blame at Nielsen for reporting an “inexplicable” drop in Nickelodeon ratings. Dauman said the independent Media Rating Council had been called in — an MRC executive later said by Nielsen — to conduct an audit of the “aberration. Viacom has said an evaluation of set-top-box data has shown Nielsen is off-base. Regrettably, there is no indication Viacom will release any details or findings.

The company’s lawyer tells a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that a lower court judge was wrong to rule that Google Inc.’s popular video service was protected from copyright infringement claims.

Cablevision and Viacom have resolved a dispute over streaming rights, the media companies said on Wednesday. In a joint statement, the two companies said that Viacom’s programs will continue to appear on the app. Just don’t expect either side to admit they were wrong. “Neither side is conceding its original legal position or will have further comment,” the statement reads.

The media company, which is controlled by billionaire Sumner Redstone, earned $574 million, or 97 cents per share, in the fiscal third quarter that ended on June 30. That’s up 37% from $420 million, or 69 cents per share, a year earlier.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom Inc. have put the guns down in their legal fight over the former’s plans to stream the latter’s content on iPads. The two companies, which filed suit against each other in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in April, told the court they have entered into a standstill agreement which essentially means they are putting the legal battle on hold while they try to resolve the dispute amicably.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom each filed lawsuits on Thursday that seek to resolve a stormy dispute over the right to stream channels to new devices like iPads.

Time Warner Cable pulled 12 networks from Discovery Communications, Fox Cable Networks and Viacom off its iPad streaming-video application on Thursday — after those companies complained that the service violated the terms of their distribution agreements — although the MSO continues to insist it has the right to deliver that programming to the tablets.

Does Time Warner Cable have the right to provide iPad users with live TV channels? That’s at the center of a dispute between the cable operator and several large media […]

Viacom Inc. said Thursday that its first quarter net income fell to $610 million while revenue fell 5% to $3.83 billion from $4.02 billion, a drop Viacom attributed mainly to lower DVD sales. In addition to MTV, Viacom operates cable channels BET, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. The company sais it benefited from the ongoing recovery in advertising, and in the latest quarter saw domestic ad revenue grow 10%.

Viacom and Hulu announced a broad content agreement Wednesday that brings The Daily Show and The Colbert Report back to Hulu and now also to Hulu Plus. Each of the shows will be available the morning after they originally air.

The Associated Press, Microsoft, and musical group The Eagles are among dozens of organizations now urging an appellate court to rule in Viacom’s favor in its copyright infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube.

Viacom says a new wave of digital piracy could threaten the U.S. media business unless federal courts overturn its defeat in a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube video-sharing site.

It’s almost a clean sweep against Google TV: Now Viacom joins a list of big TV networks blocking the new Internet TV service access to premium TV shows.  Viacom is added to a list including NBC, Fox, ABC and CBS, which have declined to let Google TV act as a new digital TV distributor — one that would link up Internet access of content to traditional TV sets.

Viacom’s troubled gaming unit, which includes its Rock Band video game, pulled down overall third-quarter company results. Better news came from its media networks unit — witnessing 8% more domestic advertising sales and a 10% hike in worldwide affiliate fees. Worldwide advertising revenues improved 7% to $1.17 billion.