Dish Network Customers To Lose Access To AMC, WE, & IFC This Weekend, Unless Last Minute Agreement Is Reached

rtruell - I think that is partially true of AMC being 'at fault', however that is only from the perspective of finances and/or corporate BS. From the consumer side of things - Dish is at fault. Dish should provide customers with the programming they pay for... obviously consumer pays dish > dish pays AMC for broadcasting rights & broadcasts content to consumer. Just like any other service or company that operates as a 'middle man' between consumers and industry, they take on a risk... When you sign consumers into service contract & agree to provide them with TV programming (or anything really), and they continue to make their payments; then you continue to provide the TV programming - consumers only care what they pay the cable/satellite provider... do we honestly care what they pay each broadcaster? no.. you(service provider, dish..) deal with it on your end... if the service provider has to pay more, well sucks for them.... but you don't take away the content/programs you are supposed to provide DESPITE changing rates - when a fast food joint offers 99 cents chicken nuggets every day.... they don't raise the price of chicken nuggets if their cost for chicken increases - they negotiate, and if those negotiations fail, they continue to provide 99cent nuggets and make less money (or maybe they switch from all white meat to including chicken feet and eyeballs as filler) - but as the middle man, dealing directly w the consumer, sometimes you MUST take a loss.... if not, the phrase 'the customer's always right' would never have been invented... part of that phrase means taking back damaged goods (financial loss) to keep the customer happy.... The same applies to dish - customers don't care how much dish bitches the how much DISH has to pay AMC, the customer only cares how much THEY have to pay dish, and the programming they get in return... Because dish deals directly w/ the consumer, they need to take the loss and try to continue negotiates, and let the consumer keep watching AMC as if everything w/ dish is all good and happy. As soon as they refuse to pay, dish loses out - not AMC. AMC's customer is not the viewers, the viewers are customers of dish - and they will be pissed off at dish, no matter HOW they explain their actions.

These things are usually a "he said, she said" thing - the channel owner claims that the cable/satellite provider said one thing, the cable/satellite provider claims the channel owner says something else - and so it's hard to know who's "at fault".  However, this time we've got two cable/satellite providers saying essentially the same thing about one channel owner...that the channel owner is demanding higher fees for channel(s) with low viewership.  Looks very much like who is "at fault" in this case is quite clear...AMC.