How is Dish Network still alive?

[97chris]

Dish Network has had the most disputes in recent years including a dispute in my area where people have not had access to NBC, ABC and The CW for almost a year now (Thank God i have DirecTV).

How are they still surviving? I'm surprised to see them still standing with all of these disputes i hear involving Dish.

 

[umfan]

They still have millions of subscribers despite the disputes, that's how.

 

[landtuna]

Dish Network has had the most disputes in recent years including a dispute in my area where people have not had access to NBC, ABC and The CW for almost a year now (Thank God i have DirecTV).

How are they still surviving? I'm surprised to see them still standing with all of these disputes i hear involving Dish.

My guess is that the subscribers who have been denied the major networks via DISH are able to receive them via OTA. Either that or they just don't care about network TV all that much. Could be a combination of both.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Dish Network has had the most disputes in recent years including a dispute in my area where people have not had access to NBC, ABC and The CW for almost a year now (Thank God i have DirecTV).

How are they still surviving? I'm surprised to see them still standing with all of these disputes i hear involving Dish.

Cause that happens with ALL TV providers. I suspect the clashes will become more heated and more frequent as the overall size of the cable pie continues to shrink.

 

[anotherguyTN]

I have my own personal boycott of Dish because they're definitely the worst about continually being in disputes.

 

[CTListener]

Either that or they just don't care about network TV all that much.

Ding ding ding!

 

[ftballfan]

Dish Network has had the most disputes in recent years including a dispute in my area where people have not had access to NBC, ABC and The CW for almost a year now (Thank God i have DirecTV).

How are they still surviving? I'm surprised to see them still standing with all of these disputes i hear involving Dish.

Which market are you in?

My home market (Traverse City-Cadillac) was down to only PBS at one point in 2015 due to two separate contract disputes (one with NBC/ABC and the other with CBS/FOX). To make matters worse, TC-C has large swaths that aren't able to get at least one of the Big Four OTA.

I think Dish Network's international channel selection (which is one of the only things Dish has going for them over DirecTV) helps them do at least somewhat okay.

 

[davideduardo]

Ding ding ding!

In a recent earnings report, the CEO of Univision said that over 1 million Dish cancellations can be attributed to the dispute with that group of networks. Apparently they did an actual sample of Univision users and found a very high percentage of Spanish language TV viewers who had been with Dish are now gone.

Univision did an extensive on air campaign, using radio and TV, to show Dish users how to get alternative services, including ones that would pay the Dish cancellation fee for them.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_TV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_Network

What I like to know here is how does Dish Network not run the risk of being the "Sears or Kmart of TV content distribution" given the company's history in being named in the most contract disputes I see in the 2017 report their revenues and income are down. We are entering a point when other tv providers like YoutubeTV and others can step in and take away Dish Networks subscribers away from them.


https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001082/000155837018000826/dish-20171231x10k.htm

 

[Poledo]

I only use Dish because I had a pi$$ing contest with AT&T and they now own DirecTV.

I'll admit that until this last year I got exceptional customer service from Dish.

I'm preparing to switch to Mediacom cable even tough it will severely limit my HD options and has excessive downtime since I'm at the "end of the run", miles away from the head end.

 

[umfan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_TV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_Network

What I like to know here is how does Dish Network not run the risk of being the "Sears or Kmart of TV content distribution" given the company's history in being named in the most contract disputes I see in the 2017 report their revenues and income are down. We are entering a point when other tv providers like YoutubeTV and others can step in and take away Dish Networks subscribers away from them.


https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001082/000155837018000826/dish-20171231x10k.htm

Dish has determined its competitive advantage lies in being able to offer the lowest price point for a decent package. They are able to do this by taking a hard line with content providers. Since they are both profitable and growing, I'm hard pressed as to how your analogy of Dish to Kmart is at all apt?

 

[97chris]

Which market are you in?

My home market (Traverse City-Cadillac) was down to only PBS at one point in 2015 due to two separate contract disputes (one with NBC/ABC and the other with CBS/FOX). To make matters worse, TC-C has large swaths that aren't able to get at least one of the Big Four OTA.

I think Dish Network's international channel selection (which is one of the only things Dish has going for them over DirecTV) helps them do at least somewhat okay.

I'm in the Sherman-Denison, TX/Ada, OK market. We lack a PBS station in our market but there are some translators in the Oklahoma part of the market for the Oklahoma PBS station. We also lack spanish language channels. We only really have 2 channels with 3 subchannels on each. Dish has not had ABC, NBC and The CW (KTEN channels) but they still have KXII channels (CBS, FOX). I don't know what Dish does for PBS but DirecTV gives me an SD feed of PBS (guide says PBSNET).

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Frankly, if Dish lost all their subscribers in the Sherman-Ada DMA (Market #160), they wouldn't cry. When they have had disputes with broadcasters with presence in major markets, they have been resolved in days or maybe a week.

I do think Dish tries hard to strong-arm their small-scale broadcasters -- which is part of the reason why Scripps, Gray, Nexstar and others have been trying to scale up.

 

[Mr Tony]

I'm in the Sherman-Denison, TX/Ada, OK market. We lack a PBS station in our market but there are some translators in the Oklahoma part of the market for the Oklahoma PBS station. We also lack spanish language channels. We only really have 2 channels with 3 subchannels on each. Dish has not had ABC, NBC and The CW (KTEN channels) but they still have KXII channels (CBS, FOX). I don't know what Dish does for PBS but DirecTV gives me an SD feed of PBS (guide says PBSNET).

you'd get the national PBS feed just like DIrectv does. If there is no PBS in a market for some reason Dish doesnt import one. Where I am (Mankato, MN which is just CBS & FOX via KEYC) Dish and Directv import ABC & NBC from Minneapolis but give us the national PBS and not KTCA Minneapolis

 

[97chris]

Frankly, if Dish lost all their subscribers in the Sherman-Ada DMA (Market #160), they wouldn't cry. When they have had disputes with broadcasters with presence in major markets, they have been resolved in days or maybe a week.

I do think Dish tries hard to strong-arm their small-scale broadcasters -- which is part of the reason why Scripps, Gray, Nexstar and others have been trying to scale up.

Gray owns KXII in the Sherman-Ada market.

 

[anotherguyTN]

Another thing that I think Dish is doing right is carrying the national feeds of several popular subchannels like Me TV. Unfortunately they're in the higher priced packages. I wish that DirecTV would do that as well. But even with that I still won't go to Dish again.

 

[Mr Tony]

Another thing that I think Dish is doing right is carrying the national feeds of several popular subchannels like Me TV. Unfortunately they're in the higher priced packages.

Dish carries them in their "basic package" of AT120. They are not in the Flex pack or lower "retain" packages like Smart pack. Welcome pack does have Buzzr, Grit, and Justice

 

[JeremyAndrews]

When we first got satellite TV, local channels were not even an option for us. We had to use an antenna. The cable system even ran ads pointing this out. We did have the option to pay for LA and NYC stations if we wanted network programming. Eventually they arrived at a fee of $5 a month.

Nowdays everybody pays for local channels whether they like it or not. “Broadcast TV Surcharge” Same story with Disney Channel. That was about $6 or $7 a month. Now it’s just in the standard package and people still pay for it.

I hate it when companies get into disputes but the ones that don’t tend to just stick it to the subscribers. Lot of desperation on both sides. I believe 1999 or 2000 is when I first saw this kind of thing happen. Time Warner Cable was having a dispute with ABC. For a few hours they simply put the other ABC station on the system on the ABC O&O’s channel space.

Journal-Scripps still never recovered from their fight with Time Warner. Channel 4 has Game Show Network to this day while WTMJ is on Channel 83 locally.

As for Dish Network, unlike AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum, etc they are exclusively a TV company. They don’t offer anything else as far as I know. I don’t think they want to drive whoever they have left away with higher costs with the rise of streaming. Otherwise they would probably cave in like everybody else.

 

[Will_H_69_9]

my explanation of why Dish is still alive is simple, Rural areas with little or no high speed internet choices need a form of Cable TV, they live in areas where Cable Companies won't install fiber optic cables and regular cables for TV and internet purposes.

and as for why Dish has more disputes that has me dubbing their disputes "Dishputes" is simple, Dish is run in a way where they try to be cheapskates when it comes to negotiation for new long term deals with content providers to the point they make people there in the content provider's negotiations mad and angry at them tot he point, they walk out and cause periods of blackouts. in the case of Univision, they made them mad that they violated a previous agreement under the previous retransmission carriage deal that when the deal expired, they didn't agree to renew and on top of that, both sides are in a lawsuit over it, so it's gonna be a year or 2 for this dispute to be resolved unless they settle out of court as part of a new agreement to carry the Univision owned channels. similar thing happened with Disney where Dish carried HD feeds for select Disney owned networks thinking that the current deal at the time that was for the SD feeds covered HD too, only for Disney to get mad about it, forced Dish to pull the HD feeds to said networks and sued Dish for illegal retransmission of carriage of those channels without permission from Disney.

 

[brettbutlerisok]

Dish has determined its competitive advantage lies in being able to offer the lowest price point for a decent package.

I used to sell Dish, it's this and those international (India) packages. Two easy ways to sell it door-to-door, see Indian people, or see a DirecTV with the LNB's stripped off. (Poor people with no control)