Much-loved Viacom shows such as The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, SpongeBob Squarepants, iCarly, and Jersey Shore can no longer be viewed online due to the company's ongoing dispute with DirecTV over carriage fees.

26 Viacom properties including Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, CMT, Logo, and BET, have gone dark for DirecTV's 20 million subscribers after both sides failed to reach an agreement over carriage fees.

What do you do when your critically acclaimed show that costs loads to produce is watched by essentially nobody? Traditionally shows like Damages would be axed but an interesting deal via DirecTV has saved this particular drama from oblivion.

Cable provider horror stories seem to be about a dime a dozen these days and, from time to time, GawkerTV receives correspondence from readers with a bone to pick. Today's story comes from Vickie, who went through hell and back trying to cancel her DirecTV subscription.

In a single hour, Macy's sold 72,000 bottles of Beyonce's new perfume yesterday. If you think that's impressive, check out all the other stuff she uses her famous face to sell. A portrait of the artist as a commodity.

David Spade had his sniveling say about the DirecTV commercial he did with Chris Farley's ghost. Now, one of the guys who wrote the commercial writes a fair, reasonable blog post about his intentions. Okay. But he ends with this:

David Spade, a real human with a real human heart, is so wounded by the criticism of his new ad "starring" his dead pal Chris Farley that he's come forth with a heartfelt statement from his flack.

[A glimpse of a whirling propeller and lower Manhattan from the DIRECTV blimp last night. Image via Getty]

Lawyers for EchoStar claim News Corp.'s satellite TV company DirecTV hired hacker Christopher Tarnovsky to steal and sell security codes for its competing Dish Network, eventually costing EchoStar $900 million in lost revenue. Tarnovsky testified in court yesterday and admitted he wrote such a program and that he took money from News Corp. publishing unit HarperCollins for ten years. He said his first payment was "$20,000 in cash hidden in electronic devices mailed from Canada," reports Reuters. Tarnovsky and DirecTV claim the hacker was only "reverse engineering" the Dish technology — a perfectly legitimate practice in the electronics industry. Though not one typically funded through secret international payments from unrelated corporate subsidiaries. (Photo by geraintwn)

Critically acclaimed but chronically low-rated jock opera Friday Night Lights managed to sneak in a third season thanks to a unique deal between NBC Universal and DirecTV. But the network has built an interesting window into the release — the episodes will premiere on DirecTV's "The 101" channel in October, but not air in prime time until February. The episodes also won't be available on Hulu until NBC airs them next year, which makes no sense at all.

One-time DVR pioneer ReplayTV has been sold to DirecTV. This follows competitor EchoStar's purchase of Sling Media back in September. The most interesting question is what happens to TiVo now.