🚀 go-pugleaf

It may be of interest to know that Showtime (owned by Viacom) sued ATC
(owned by Time, Inc.) for monopoly practices regarding the issue of 
Showtime carriage on thier own owned cable systems(ATC's systems) several
years ago (89 or 90, I think but I have not verified).  They have just 
recently settled the action with an undisclosed payment by Time to Viacom
and an agreement for ATC systems to carry more Showtime & Movie Channel
and to do some joint advertising.  This was all accomplished without the
intervention of Congress or anyone else.  One of the reasons that Showtime
came into business in the first place was because for a few years (late 70's)
HBO was the only movie programmer on satellite and they started to charge
high rates, rates that were so high that Viacom began their own movie service
to keep their costs reasonable.  Showtime grew from there and has forced
alot of the innovation and improvement (24 hours, for example-though you
might argue whehter that's an improvement or not) on to HBO to compete.
Bob Vogel