Oh Lord, I'm Going To Miss New Episodes Of "Brooke Knows Best"

UPDATE 1-1-09: Thanks a crapload to the rational adults at Viacom and Time-Warner who managed to reach an intelligent compromise and keep the Viacom channels on the air, thus making me look like a jerk for bringing it up. Happy freaking New Year.

Those of you who have Time Warner Cable may have heard that they're kicking all the Viacom-owned channels off their menu at 12:01 tonight. That means that T/W customers like me will lose MTV and VH1 and everything with MTV and VH1 in their names as well as Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. It's the last one that affects me the most since I am an avid viewer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, both of which are available online at ComedyCentral.com which means I'll mainly be affected if I want to watch them when they come on at 11 which I hardly ever do. To sum up, the effect of this on me is minimal. This should come as a great relief to those of you who share my view that life is all about me.

In fact, just about all the original content on all those stations is available online, ranging from Comedy Central's crappy South Park clones to MTV and VH1's crappy reality shows. Apparently, this is one of Time Warner's sticking points. They're saying all the money on the internet that isn't being spent on foot fetish porn is going to Viacom which means Viacom can afford to pay more to Time Warner. Or something like that. Frankly, it hurts my head when two wealthy corporations start whining to the public about how they want to be slightly wealthier. Of the two scummy players, Viacom seems to be the slightly less scummy one in this case and I imagine many Time Warner customers will switch to DirecTV if an agreement can't be reached and having those channels is important to them.

As I prepare for a new, post-Viacom-on-my-cable-thingie year, I reflect on the fact that, a few years ago, this would have been a big deal. Now, instead of watching Jon Stewart on my high def TV, I'll watch him on my high def computer monitor or just burn him onto a DVD and still watch him on my high def TV. Or I'll just watch him on my damn phone.

Happy New Year, all, except for you who have decided to pull popular channels off the air on a holiday weekend. I'm sure that will work out very well for all involved.