proposals included no compensation and no response to their counteroffer. Without a retransmission consent agreement, Suddenlink would not be allowed to carry the two stations on any of its cable systems. During the dispute Sinclair posted a letter on the websites of the two stations and began to notify viewers with scrolling crawl messages on the bottom of the screen encouraging them to switch to another provider like DirecTV or Dish Network. While this was a comparable solution for the Huntington-Charleston area the two satellite providers did not provide the two stations to viewers in Beckley or Parkersburg. Suddenlink subsequently filed an Emergency Retransmission Consent Complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on July 5, 2006 claiming Sinclair failed to negotiate in good faith for the stations and demanded Suddenlink to stop carriage of the two stations during a Nielsen rating sweeps period. The following day Sinclair also submitted a filing with the FCC requesting the Commission order Suddenlink to cease carriage of its signals. Suddenlink claimed that Sinclair was originally asking for $4 million in fees over the three-year life of an agreement but changed the offer to a one time fee of $200 per subscriber ($40 million total) and $1 per month in subscriber fees ($2.4 million annually) in order to carry the stations after Sinclair found out how much Suddenlink paid Charter for the systems. Suddenlink claimed it was obliged to carry the stations until the end of the Nielsen sweeps, yet this was disputed with Sinclair claiming the rule was intended to benefit broadcasters, not distributors. On July 3, 2006 Sinclair withdrew the out-of-market signals, but left the stations on in Suddenlink's Huntington-Charleston systems. On July 27, 2006 both parties agreed to a temporary extension which kept the stations on Suddenlink's systems until August 7 if an agreement was not reached. Suddenlink and Sinclair reached an agreement on August 8, 2006 and withdrew their FCC petitions. While the terms of the agreement were not made public Pete Able, Suddenlink's vice president of government relations, stated the company "made it very clear" that the $40 million fee "was never something we could find mutually agreeable." Viacom Prior to October 1, 2014, Suddenlink carried cable channels from Viacom, including BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, TV Land, VH1 and various smaller spin-off networks. The two companies were able to reach an agreement at the end of