Time Warner Cable Customers Say Bye to MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon!

If you are a Colbert Report or The Hills fan and are a Time Warner Cable customer, you may want to start looking into DirecTV.

Come January 1st, 2009 you may not be able to see them at home!

It appears Time Warner Cable customer service was unprepared for the onslaught of complaints from subscribers flooding into call centers.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many reps were unaware of the dispute with Viacom, which began running news crawls below its programming that 19 channels would go dark on the cable system operation at 12:01 AM on January 1st.

Viacom also placed full-page advertisements in some major market newspapers today featuring protests by its media characters, including Dora the Explorer who is shown crying because she is being taken away from her fans, or SpongeBob freaking out.

Viacom is even telling viewers they can get Dora or SpongeBob back by signing onto Time Warner Cable’s competitors DirecTV or Verizon.

Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable is prepared to refund customers for the lost programming if a deal can’t be reached by New Year’s, though the amount hasn’t been determined yet.