Sony has just announced some big changes for their PlayStation Vue service, over at the PlayStation Blog. Mainly the announcement that the service will not longer have access to any Viacom branded channels. This means several major channels such as Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodeon, Spike, VH1, TV Land and even MTV, will no longer be accessible to PlayStation Vue subscriber. This line-up change is set to occur at 12:01AM on November 11th, 2016. To me, that’s a major blow to the service, especially since I got this to not only ditch my cable provider but to keep watching the channels that my family and I enjoyed.
Here’s a list of all the channels that will soon be disappearing.
- BET
- BET Gospel
- BET Jams
- BET Soul
- Comedy Central
- Centric
- CMT
- CMT Music
- Logo TV
- MTV
- MTV2
- MTV Live
- MTV Classic
- MTVU
- Nickelodeon
- Nick Jr.
- NickMusic
- Nicktoons
- Spike
- TV Land
- VH1
“As part of our ongoing evaluation of the PlayStation Vue offering, we have determined that removing the bundle of channels from Viacom is the best way for us to continue to offer the most compelling value to our fans.” This announcement comes from the head of Sony’s PlayStation Vu service, Dwayne Benefield.
Sony plans on adding new channels to replace or soften the blow of those Viacom channels being removed, such as BBC America, NBA TV and several other unannounced channels. I don’t know what they have planned, but those new channels will need to be something to equal what is going to be removed fairly shortly.
Despite Sony wanting to save some money to keep the cost of their PlayStation Vue service low, I feel that their consumers aren’t going to take this very well. To me that reads, Viacom wanted too much money and we didn’t think it was worth it. There’s just way too many channels going away to justify keeping the service and I’m hard pressed to decide if my household is going to stay or look for another service now. People are already calling this the end of PlayStation Vue, and while I wouldn’t go that far, this is a bad move on their part and there is definitely going to be some impact due to this.
Looks like AT&T’s DirecTV Now service just got a bit more attractive.
