One of the attractive features of T-Mobile’s new TVision service is its Vibe tier, which offers 34 channels for just $10 per month. However, one company whose channels are included with TVision Vibe is unhappy about how their channels are being offered.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav has said that he was “very surprised” with how T-Mobile has bundled his channels, such as Discovery, Food Network, and HGTV, which are only available in TVision Vibe. Zaslav added that T-Mobile does not “have the right to do what they’re doing right now” and that Discovery has an agreement with T-Mobile where Discovery networks are “required to be carried on all their basic tiers OTT offerings.”
The CEO does go on to say that Discovery is in talks with T-Mobile to get the matter resolved.
“We’re in active discussions with them to quickly resolve that issue,” Zaslav said. “We don’t believe they have the right to do what they’re doing right now. And they know, it’s very clear to them, and they’re focused on it.”
Discovery may not be the only company that has an issue with T-Mobile’s TVision service. According to sources speaking to The Streamable, ViacomCBS has similar concerns about TVision. Interestingly, T-Mobile announced last year that it had struck a “significant content distribution agreement” with Viacom for a T-Mo streaming service.
Additionally, NBC is said to have its own concerns about TVision. Another report from The Streamable says that NBC feels that T-Mobile has breached its carriage agreement which requires T-Mo to distribute NBC and Telemundo stations as well as local NBC affiliates to all TVision customers. NBC and Telemundo are only available in TVision Live and not in Vibe.
Both ViacomCBS and NBC have reportedly told T-Mobile about their issues with TVision.
When asked about these concerns that Discovery, ViacomCBS, and NBC have with TVision, a T-Mobile spokesperson gave TmoNews the following statement:
“TVision is off to a great start! The Un-carrier has always been about listening to customers and solving their pain points, and that’s what we’re doing with TVision. And clearly, the TV business has a lot of pain points to solve! We also want to be a great partner to media companies. We are of course complying with our content agreements, and we are absolutely open to evolving our services to make them even better for consumers. We are just getting started.”
We’ll have to wait and see exactly how T-Mobile responds to this matter, but it seems likely that T-Mo will work with Discovery, ViacomCBS, and NBC to address their concerns. TVision is a major new offering from T-Mobile and so T-Mo likely wants to do whatever it can to help the service to succeed. And Discovery, ViacomCBS, and NBC all have some big name channels that T-Mobile would probably like to keep in TVision.
Sources: Seeking Alpha, The Streamable (1), (2)