Time Warner Cable Inc. says it has reached a deal with Viacom Inc. on carriage fees, avoiding a blackout of 19 cable channels including MTV and Comedy Central.

The two sides, citing disagreement over fee hikes, had threatened a damaging blackout at midnight Wednesday night that would have cut off shows such as "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "The Colbert Report" to about 15.7 million subscribers.

Shortly after agreeing to extend a midnight deadline by an hour, Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley said the sides agreed on a new contract.

Details of the deal were not immediately available.

Viacom was threatening to pull MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon and 16 other channels from Time Warner Cable if a new carriage fee deal is not agreed upon by midnight Wednesday.

Viacom has asked for fee increases of between 22 and 36 percent per channel, adding up to tens of millions of dollars per year, an amount that Time Warner says would cause an increase in customers' cable bills. But Viacom contends that the increases would cost less than 25 cents a month per subscriber.

Ann Shrewsbury with Time Warner Cable in Lincoln said, "MTVs demands are outrageous and would force our customers to pay millions of dollars more per year. MTVs networks are not worth so much more today than they were yesterday, especially given the fact that their ratings are mostly declining in recent years."

"Weve successfully negotiated hundreds of programming agreements with other cable networks, many within the last few months," Shrewsbury said. "Our hope is that we will come to an agreement with MTV Networks that is fair to our customers."

Here are the Lincoln channels that were in jeopardy were:

Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite
MTV
VH1
Spike
TV Land
Comedy Central
Noggin
MTV2
VH1 Classic
Logo
Nick Too
Nicktoons
The N