UPDATE, 5:59 AM: DirecTV says that it doesn’t want to drop the Viacom but the company “sent a letter to us late last night, forcing us to take these channels down by midnight tonight if we don’t come to an agreement….They are using this tactic to try and leverage over a 30% increase (that’s an additional one billion dollars) from our customers for the exact same Viacom channels they receive today.” As for Viacom’s claim that 26 channels are at stake — that’s only correct if you count the SD and HD feeds of a channel separately.