Jan 02 2009
Why is Dora crying?
On Wednesday morning, I got my boys up as they were doing their usual gentle calls of “Mama, where are you?” and plopped them on the couch. I turned the TV to Noggin for Ian and went in the kitchen to get his cup of rice milk warmed up for him. Suddenly, Conner said, “Mom - you’ve got to call this number or we’re going to lose Noggin and Nickelodeon.”
I came around the corner and sure enough there was text scrolling across the bottom of the screen that said that as of midnight December 31st, we could lose 19 channels, including Noggin and Nickelodeon. We were urged to call our cable company at a certain number and demand that they keep the channels.
Holy cow - this was serious! Ian adores Noggin - Blues Clues, Wow Wow Wubzy, Dora, Max and Ruby, Go, Diego Go, are all his favorite shows. Sofie and Conner both love Nickelodeon - Spongebob, Drake and Josh, iCarly are all super popular with them.
First thing every morning, Ian wants to watch Noggin while he drinks his cup of milk. How was I going to explain to him that the channels aren’t there any more?
I picked up the phone and started dialing - busy. Every time I dialed, it was busy.
I hopped on the computer and looked at MSNBC.com - there was a headline about negotiations between Viacom networks and various cable companies. AAAAHHHH - so it was about contract negotiations. According the article, Viacom, which owns Nickelodeon, Noggin, MTV and other networks, was trying to get the cable companies to pay more for their channels and the cable companies didn’t want to pay.
Viacom was now playing hardball by scrolling the info across their channels and they even placed full page ads in newspapers showing Dora or Spongebob with big tears coming down their faces. The headings of the ad, “Why is Dora crying?” WOW!
I did finally get through to our cable company - reached a recording that said they were trying their best to reach an agreement.
I then started setting up our DVR to record that day’s episodes of Dora, Blue’s Clues, Spongebob, Drake and Josh, and their other favorites to make sure that we at least had a couple of episodes of each to watch in case the channels did go dark that night.
I also did some additional scrambling and called another company to find out about getting their service installed ASAP - I mean our living room TV stays parked on Noggin or Nickelodeon pretty much throughout the day. They said they could install service the following week and they do have the channels that we MUST have.
Turns out that Viacom and our cable company did reach a last minute agreement and our channels remained. Thank goodness!
I guess Dora and Spongebob (and my kids) can dry their eyes.
