Telewest pulls plug on Nickelodeon

Updated: 17:55, 18:07, 18:17, 18:22, 18:31

Nickelodeon's bouquet of channels has been pulled from Telewest Broadband's cable TV service.

"Telewest Broadband has been unable to agree commercial terms with Nickelodeon following extensive negotiations and as a result we have removed Nickelodeon, Nick Junior, Nick Toons and Nick Replay from our analogue and digital TV platforms," Telewest's president and chief operating officer Eric Tveter told Digital Spy this evening. "We do not take the removal of any channel lightly, but we likewise cannot ignore programming costs if we are to continue to offer our subscribers excellent programming at competitive prices. We remain open to negotiation with Nickelodeon for future carriage of their channels."

Tveter added: "Telewest Broadband carries an extensive selection of children's channels including CBBC, Cbeebies, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Toonami, Trouble, Fox Kids and Discovery Kids."

Since around noon on Thursday, Nick has been airing an advert on its channels inviting viewers to call Telewest to complain. Watch the advert in DivX/AVI format - 3.9MB. The channel has also set up an appeal site with phone numbers for Telewest rivals Sky and Homechoice.

This is by no means the first carriage dispute that has been brought into the public spotlight: The History Channel was pulled from Telewest's platform in June 2002, although it was re-added to the lineup shortly afterwards after new carriage terms were agreed.

More on this as it happens.