2010 for continued carriage of Viacom's channels that was to end on September 30, 2014. Viacom had been involved in notable contract discussion in the past including a media battle with satellite provider DirecTV in 2012 which resulted in their channels being unavailable for nine days before reaching an agreement. After Viacom's channels were pulled from smaller provider Cable ONE on April 1, 2014, the cable provider replaced them with other channels. The contract negotiations became public on September 25, 2014 after five months of talks broke down between both companies. Suddenlink claimed Viacom wanted a 50% increase in fees for its programming despite its ratings decreasing. Viacom rebutted stating it attracts the greatest share of viewing of any cable provider. Suddenlink noted the majority of its customer base "do not want the Viacom channels" and did not want to pay more for Viacom's channels and wanted others instead. After the deadline passed, all Viacom channels were pulled from Suddenlink's lineup on October 1, 2014. Viacom claimed that Suddenlink rejected one of its own proposals and informed them they would drop the channels. Suddenlink maintained that Viacom rejected every proposal the company made to continue carrying Viacom's channels. Suddenlink reorganized their channel lineups to replace the Viacom channels; some of the replacements were already available to Suddenlink while some were not previously available. Suddenlink replaced Viacom's channels with twenty other channels including FXX, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Investigation Discovery, OWN, Universal Kids, TheBlaze, Pivot and Up. Due to Suddenlink's size the company received positive reception in the media saying the decision could inspire other mid-small size operators. Six months after dropping Viacom's channels Suddenlink's then-CEO Jerry Kent stated 2%–2.5% of its video subscribers dropped their service. He also noted that some of the replacement channels were viewed more than some of the dropped channels. Despite losing some video subscribers, Kent also stated "meeting the programmer’s demands would have been more costly. When Pivot ceased operations, Suddenlink started carried i24 News." Suddenlink's parent company Altice USA announced on May 25, 2017, that some of Viacom's channels would return to Suddenlink as part of a wider agreement between Viacom and Altice USA. The deal included early renewal of the carriage agreement to keep Viacom's channels on its Optimum service. Viacom and Altice USA did not announce which Viacom channels or the date they would return to Suddenlink systems. Suddenlink has reached an