Viacom Inc. will get more than $600 million a year from DirecTV in programming fees under their new seven-year agreement, up at least 20 percent from the previous terms, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Viacom, owner of the MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon networks, announced a new agreement with DirecTV this morning, ending a 10-day blackout on the satellite-TV service. The person familiar with the payments asked not to be named because the information isn’t public. Before the accord was reached, DirecTV said that Viacom was demanding a 30 percent increase, amounting to more than $1 billion in additional costs over the contract.
