<story><title>Viacom pulls “The Daily Show” offline as a result of contract dispute</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/07/viacom-pulls-the-daily-show-offline-as-a-result-of-contract-dispute/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>S201</author><text>The networks aren&apos;t &quot;double-dipping&quot;. Your cable bill pays the cable provider and ads pay the content provider; different organizations, different sources of revenue. A much better explanation from a reddit commenter: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/pz8kz/til_cable_did_not_have_commercials_until_around/c3tgl2g?context=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/pz8kz/til_cab...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>jrockway</author><text>I find this &quot;double-dipping&quot; nature of TV networks somewhat offensive.  First, 50% of the programming is advertising (20 minutes content, 10 minutes ads).  Then, they make someone pay for the privilege of delivering that advertising to my house?  It&apos;s completely nonsensical because DirectTV is providing Viacom with a valuable service: fucking satellites orbiting the earth!  And then Viacom wants DirectTV to &lt;i&gt;pay them&lt;/i&gt;.  I just don&apos;t get it.&lt;p&gt;(My bank started doing the &quot;double dip&quot; thing too.  Every item in my Bank of America statement now contains a &quot;relevant&quot; ad.  I don&apos;t know why this bothers me, but it does.  I already pay transaction fees and interest.  Must you also try to show me irrelevant ads?)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>This is like the archetypical great long-form Reddit comment. Reddit has a lot of pointless craziness, but their highest highs are also way better than HN&apos;s.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m long since past the point where the words &quot;Great comment explaining this on Reddit&quot; will get me to automatically click something.</text></comment>
<story><title>Viacom pulls “The Daily Show” offline as a result of contract dispute</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/07/viacom-pulls-the-daily-show-offline-as-a-result-of-contract-dispute/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>S201</author><text>The networks aren&apos;t &quot;double-dipping&quot;. Your cable bill pays the cable provider and ads pay the content provider; different organizations, different sources of revenue. A much better explanation from a reddit commenter: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/pz8kz/til_cable_did_not_have_commercials_until_around/c3tgl2g?context=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/pz8kz/til_cab...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>jrockway</author><text>I find this &quot;double-dipping&quot; nature of TV networks somewhat offensive.  First, 50% of the programming is advertising (20 minutes content, 10 minutes ads).  Then, they make someone pay for the privilege of delivering that advertising to my house?  It&apos;s completely nonsensical because DirectTV is providing Viacom with a valuable service: fucking satellites orbiting the earth!  And then Viacom wants DirectTV to &lt;i&gt;pay them&lt;/i&gt;.  I just don&apos;t get it.&lt;p&gt;(My bank started doing the &quot;double dip&quot; thing too.  Every item in my Bank of America statement now contains a &quot;relevant&quot; ad.  I don&apos;t know why this bothers me, but it does.  I already pay transaction fees and interest.  Must you also try to show me irrelevant ads?)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrockway</author><text>The disagreement is that DirectTV isn&apos;t paying Viacom enough money.  ``Viacom wants more money, specifically, &quot;a fee increase of more than 30 percent, amounting to more than $1 billion in additional costs over five years,&quot; according to Bloomberg.&apos;&apos;&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not complaining about DirectTV charging customers, I&apos;m complaining about Viacom charging DirectTV.  If anything, DirectTV should be charging Viacom!</text></comment>