Viacom says No MTV for Google TV

written by: Richard Kastelein

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Published on Tuesday, 23 November 2010 12:00

Joining a slew of broadcasters and content creators (ABC, NBC, FOX and Viacom parent CBS are all blocking their online content from Google TV), Viacom is nixing Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon on Google TV,  blocking it from appearing on Google's foray into the living room - at least until they figure out a way to effectively monetize it.

The Washington Post reports that Viacom has blocked full-length episodes of shows it runs on the Internet to users of Google TV, becoming the fifth television programmer to withhold content on the search engine's new Internet television platform.

“We’re blocking access to our full episode content from Google TV’s Web browser," the company said in a statement. "We continue to evaluate Google TV to identify opportunities where it may make sense to optimize our Web content for the platform.”

Viacom says Internet users can still access its shows on its Web sites through desktop computers. But users of Google TV, a platform that combines regular TV with a Web browser, aren't able to find those Internet shows through the company's new service.

Google has stated repeatedly in the past that it believes network operators will eventually see new business models and opportunities emerge from Internet television distributors like itself. Google has been in talks with networks to allow Google TV users to access the Web-based shows, but it appears they are not moving forward too well.

Of course, users who want to watch the blocked content on a big screen can easily do so simply by connecting a cable from computer to TV or it's pretty simple to change the settings in Google TV's Chrome browser to allow viewing of the blocked content.