I know most people don't care about this story, but I love the smack talk and drama!
The disconnect between Versus and DirecTV grew louder Friday, with the programmer running ads in a number of newspapers for its displacement from the satellite operator's air earlier this week.
Versus said it bought ads in eight newspapers, with its message headlined by the word "Worthless," riffing off remarks made by the No. 1 DBS provider that demeaned its programming that were made after the network went dark on Sept. 1, following the expiration of their contract. The parties have not negotiated since then.
At that time, DirecTV called the Comcast-owned Versus "piggish" for pursuing a 20% price hike, while labeling the network as "basically a paid programming and infomercial channel with occasional sporting events of interest."
Not sure if this is just something buggy with Firefox, but the picture is screwing with the formatting.
But I do like the smack talk, though DirecTV does it better than Comcast.
it wasn’t a firefox bug…should be fixed.
What a shame. There’s a lot of garbage on DirectTV. There should be a place for Versus. But I’m guessing it’s not worth a 20% bump. I wish they would be as hard on ESPN when those price increases roll around. It’s time for alacart pricing. Let Versus prove its worth – and so should ESPN and all those darn home shopping networks.
Ouch. I’m actually interested in what else Versus comes up with as the staredown continues.
The home shopping channels actually pay to get carried.
Aside from a few college football games and the occasional IRL race, Versus is dead to me. Screw them.
Take ALL those dumb sports networks off the air – the add says it all – they are Worthless!!!
What about the real soap opera ratings?
Shem, I haven’t seen the 8/24-8/28 yet, and it looks like we didn’t post the 8/17-21, but you can see those here if you haven’t already:
http://boards.soapoperanetwork.com/topic/31617-latest-ratings-gl-up-in-total-viewers-and-hh/
Versus only has cycling, hockey, and likely blow-out games like Texas at Wyoming. Basically, Versus is a dumping ground for sports and sporting events that can’t get network or cable airtime elsewhere. What’s their biggest draw? Hockey? An out-of-market Indy race?
Pass.
One day, the much longed-for a la carte channel selection might become a reality, and maybe we could all have the channels that we want instead of the channels that are forced upon us. If you want Versus, you could get Versus, but I doubt enough people would want it for it to exist.
DirectTV subscribers that want Versus do have one credible argument. Their monthly fee isn’t going down because Versus was dropped.
DirecTV calls Versus piggish? Wonder what the DirecTV profit margin is? Hmmm… not a fan of either entity though so it might be amusing to see what these goofballs come up with next in their 3rd grade spat.
When ala carte arrives I’ll consider satellite or cable again. Until then, I’ll watch my shows on network websites or buy season packs of television shows. I don’t much care to spend up to $60 or whatever it is a month to get all tiers so I can watch 9 channels scattered across the spectrum out of 200+. Waste of time and money, especially when up to 1/3 (or more) of the time for an hour-long show is commercials to begin with.
Told DirecTV the same thing when they started calling me to sign up with them (and I finally decided to answer them)… then reminded them of the laws regarding the “Do Not Call” list and what could happen next time they dial my number (Note: I was on the list for 4 years before they started making that particular rash of calls and I did check and was still on it — their bad, not mine). Haven’t heard back from them since.
Boy it’s a good thing we got rid of Directv and switched to at&t u-verse because versus is a big network or it’s growing and for directv to drop it would be crazy and i think directv should focus more on their HD which i learned sucks once we got at&t but anyways i give directv a jeer for wanting to do this even though i never watched that network, how about directv gets rid of 1-2 of those stupid shopping channels. no wonder directv isn’t doing that hot but comcast is worst.
Directv this year gained almost 700,000 subs which is great.
Dont know where u are gettin your info from.
@romo- Profit wise not subscription wise it’s good that they are getting alot of subscribers but their profit margin is down.
Keep the news coming!
Versus primary audience is males 18-34 and males 18-49, males 25-54.
and the network is set-up for a big year coming up.
I love Versus programing!!! The hockey games and Indycar are 2 very important things to me!!
Tour de France was good, the Dakar rally was good, but other than that, how did Versus pay for their 10-year deal with IndyCar?? IndyCar *IS* worthless, or at least close to it, drawing <275,000 households nationally per race (5 out of 8 races I've seen numbers for had a 0.25 rating or less). I don't want to pay for Versus' mistake! If they were stupid enough to PAY to sleep with the town slut (IRL IndyCar, which has ruined itself and nearly everything it's touched over the last 14 years) and furthermore not use protection (ie- not have an 'out' clause in the contract), they shouldn't come crying to us for money so they can clear up the nasty 'problem' they've developed as a result!
Versus needs to remember that customers ALREADY PAY to receive the channel and that if advertisers aren't willing to cover the costs, then there's always the 'time buy' option available to the people who want their programming to be seen. IndyCar has copied Champ Car in every other respect, this will just be 1 more! After that, there'll just be 1 final act of emulation left. (Champ Car is no more).
I already miss versus PBR!!! Anymore PBR fans out there. I am soon switching to dish so I have have versus, thus the PBR and the UT games
Notice how the composition of the main image in the ad is such that a racing car’s wheel (ie: an IRL IndyCar’s wheel) is *on top* of the scrap heap – and also *in the foreground* — suggesting it was the last item to come to a rest.
The image thus tells a story: an IndyCar has been launched up into the cheesegrater (aka ‘fence’) , wiped out the flag stand, gone through the fence and on its way into its rightful home in the junk pile, taken out some innocent hockey and football players, a Tour de France rider, the World Extreme Cagefighting champion, and a cowboy. Probably some hunters, too, but I’m not sure as they’re usually well camouflaged.
This graphic metaphor is actually not all that from the truth.