Shares in Dish Network parent EchoStar climbed 7% in early Monday trading, following reports by Bloomberg that the satellite TV provider is discussing a merger with DirecTV.

It’s not the first time Dish Network-parent EchoStar has entered discussions with DirecTV, with EchoStar chairman Charlie Ergen regularly stating for years that he believes such a tie-up is “inevitable.” 

In fact, the FCC blocked a formal proposal to merge the two once in 2002, citing antitrust concerns.

But according to MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, the waning market power of these two struggling satellite TV businesses may actually work in their favor this time.

Also Read: Dish and Sling TV Revenue Collapses, Down a Record 10% in Q2

Back in July 2021, just before AT&T spun off DirecTV into a separate entity, the pay TV company had 15.412 million remaining subscribers.

According to a DirecTV source, that number has fallen to around 11 million.

Moffett says that, in light of such unchecked subscriber losses, “it’s hard to imagine that regulators would block a deal.”

But given that there are “no synergies” between the companies’ satellite portfolios (which operate on two different conditional access technologies), a merger would likely provide very limited benefits.

“The biggest synergy would once have been to eliminate churn,” Moffett explained. “But today they each capture so few gross additions that cutting them, potentially even in half, wouldn’t amount to much.”

While DirecTV and Dish could benefit from the merging of their ground facilities and G&A, that single sector likely won’t be enough to keep the business afloat for more than a year.

"It’s hard to argue that a merger shouldn’t happen; it clearly should. Consolidation during a period of secular decline is always to be expected,” wrote Moffett. “But it would be a mistake to overestimate its importance. Adding a year or so to the expected life of satellite TV isn’t going to change the narrative for programmers, distributors, or even for satellite TV.”

We'd assumed it had already happened before, since both companies are controlled by Chairman Charlie Ergen, but Dish Network pay TV and Hughes Networks Systems satellite broadband are bundling their services for hard-to-reach rural customers for the first time. 

New customers who bundle Dish pay TV with the Hughesnet Internet will receive $5 off each service. The bundle also includes a two-year price-lock guarantee. 

Dish and Hughes are now under the same corporate roof, following the merger of Dish into EchoStar back in January.

"With the combination of Hughes and Dish technologies, innovation, and leadership focused on rural American homes, we are more strategically aligned, and the customer remains at the center of what we do," said Paul Gaske, chief operating officer, Hughes, in a statement. "Rural customers have traditionally had limited options for TV and internet in rural America. Dish and Hughes are solving those hurdles by further advancing connectivity in rural communities to provide the best value in TV and Internet."

Hughesnet ISP tiers start at $60 a month for a package that delivers 50 megabits per second downstream. The company's technology backbone is now backed by the new Jupiter 3 satellite, which was launched last July, and is capable of delivering speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

For now, the Dish and Hughes services are segregated as two distinct services delivered by different satellites to separate receiver dishes on customer rooftops. But the two companies are working on various other forms of integration that go beyond billing. 

There's reportedly talk of bundling virtual pay TV service Sling TV with Hughesnet. Dish's Android TV-based Hopper Plus digital video recorder system is also being optimized to work with Hughesnet tech. 

As it looks to complete its pricey national buildout of a 5G wireless network, it would certainly help EchoStar to improve the cash flow of its legacy business.

Dish satellite TV lost 213,000 customers in the first quarter, but that did represent a significant improvement over the 318,000 lost from January - March of last year. 

And Hughes lost 26,000 broadband customers in Q1 vs. a year-ago quarterly loss of 51,000. 

A federal appeals court has rejected an Indianapolis broadcaster’s claims that DirecTV and Dish Network racially discriminated against his company by declining to pay retransmission fees to carry its stations. 

Circle City Broadcasting and its majority owner, DuJuan McCoy, had asked the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a U.S. District Court’s decision last year to throw out the cases without a trial. (The news was reported by Indiana Lawyer.)

Circle City had sued the satellite TV companies back in 2020 because they refused to pay retrans fees after Circle City bought Indianapolis TV stations WISH and WNDY from Nexstar Media Group. McCoy charged Dish and DirecTV were discriminating against the stations because they were now part of a Black-owned business. 

“For their part, Dish and DirecTV presented clear evidence of a race-neutral reason for their contractual negotiating decisions — Circle City’s lack of bargaining power,” the 7th Circuit ruled.

According to court documents, when asked by McCoy why he was offered lower rates than competitors, a representative for Dish responded that “extremely large groups, like Nexstar, are able to extract money for stations that [multichannel distributors] would not pay for otherwise, simply by withholding consent for the stations [multichannel distributors] really do want,” a practice Dish calls an “industry norm.”

Following DirecTV’s announcement that it would give subscribers a discount if they decide they don’t want their local TV stations as part of their pay-TV package, Dish Network said it has been offering consumers the same option for seven years.

The offers come at a time when satellite providers are losing subscribers to cord-cutting. In looking for ways to offer a more consumer-friendly price. Dish and DirecTV said subscribers who opt out of receiving their local stations would save $12 a month. Dish offers a 50-plus-channel base tier called a Flex Pack for $62.99 that can be supplemented with other packs of channels, including a local-stations package for $12. 

DirecTV publicized its “no locals” offer in response to often contentious retransmission-consent negotiations that can lead to blackouts that anger customers. In January, Tegna stations returned to DirecTV lineups after a six-week absence because of a contract impasse.

Subscribers opting out of network-affiliated stations would also lose satellite access to national programming from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

“In light of recent news regarding DirecTV's introduction of its new opt-out feature for local channels, it's important to highlight that Dish has been offering this capability to customers for the last seven years,“ Dish said. ”Dish firmly believes in empowering its subscribers with the ability to customize their viewing experience according to their preferences.”  

Viewers also can add their own over-the-air antenna to the Hopper digital video recorder and record local or network shows using the program guide, Dish noted.

DirecTV’s announcement left some people who follow the TV business scratching their heads to see how they could make such an offer without violating the law or their contracts with programmers.

One industry source noted that while Dish has offered an opt-out to subscribers for years, there has been a lack of demand and it has had minimal impact on the distribution of local stations.

While customers can opt out, some broadcasters have clauses in their contract guaranteeing a certain level of penetration, which means that at a certain point, even if subscribers no longer receive the stations, the satellite operator still has to pay retransmission consent fees.

Without the stations, DirecTV and Dish cannot distribute network programming, but some network programming is available outside the satellite platform via streaming apps.

Dish Network said it reached a new carriage agreement with Hearst Television, ending a blackout that had lasted since September.

Dish said Hearst's 37 network-affiliated stations were immediately restored to its customers.

“We’re pleased to have reached a long-term agreement that benefits all parties and most importantly, our customers,” Gary Schanman, executive VP and group president, video services at Dish Network, said. “Thank you to our customers for your patience and understanding as we worked through the negotiations.”

Dish had claimed Hearst was demanding tens of millions of dollars in rate increases.

Hearst said Dish had been paying below market rates for retransmission rights to its stations.

Dish lost 64,000 pay TV subscribers in the third quarter and posted a $139 million loss.

Circle City Broadcasting has filed papers appealing summary judgments dismissing its discrimination suits against satellite-TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network.

Circle City is asking the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a U.S. District Court judge’s decision to throw out the cases without a trial and order the lower court to hold a jury trial.

DirecTV had no comment on the appeal.

Circle City had sued the satellite companies because they refused to pay retrans fees after Circle City bought Indianapolis TV stations WISH and WIND from Nexstar Media Group.

Dish and DirecTV had been paying retrans fees to Nexstar.

Also Read: Judge Denies Dish Motion To Remove 17 Words From Circle City Suit Decision

Dujuan McCoy, owner of Circle City, charged Dish and DirecTV were discriminating against the stations because they were now part of a Black-owned business. The satellite companies said that the stations were now owned by a smaller company without leverage and that was why they wouldn’t pay.

In her decisions, Chief Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana ruled Circle City hadn’t produced evidence that the satellite companies acted out of “racial animus or intent to discriminate based on race.”

A Federal Judge denied Dish Network’s motion seeking to have 17 words describing how much Dish was willing to pay Circle City to carry its Indianapolis television stations deleted from the court's decision dismissing Circle City’s discrimination suit against Dish.

Circle City claimed that after it acquired WISH-TV and WNDY-TV from Nexstar Media Group, Dish wanted to cut how much it paid for the stations retransmission rights because Circle City was a Black-owned media company, leading to a blackout of the stations. 

In her ruling dismissing the suit, Chief Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana said “Dish refused to contract with [Circle City] for the payment of fees for that right, for the longest time offering zero dollars, and at the eleventh hour offering only pennies per subscriber.“

In its motion, Dish said it wanted that last sentence redacted in order to maintain the confidentiality of documents it submitted to the court. How much distributors pay stations and networks are usually a closely held secret.

But the judge rejected the motion. “Documents that affect the disposition of federal litigation a presumptively open to public view, even if the litigant strongly prefer secrecy, unless a statute, rule or privilege justifies confidentiality,” she said. “The court intentionally wrote its summary judgment opinion in general terms and in a way that omitted any secret details.”

Circle City Broadcasting opposed the Dish motion. .

“Although Circle City lost the summary judgment motion, it is ultimately a media company,” the broadcaster said in court papers, according to WISH's website.  “It believes in the First Amendment. It believes that the basis for a public body’s decision should be available to the public.”

In dismissing Circle City’s discrimination suit against Dish, and a similar suit against DirecTV, Pratt ruled that ”there is no evidence in the record to support the claim that racial discrimination caused Dish to discriminate against Circle City or create a triable issue of fact."

Circle City owner and CEO DuJuan McCoy said he would appeal the dismissal of the discrimination suit.

Circle City Broadcasting is continuing its battle with Dish Network, resisting Dish’s request to redact the fact that Dish was offering to pay “zero dollars” to carry Indianapolis stations WISH and WNDY from a decision dismissing Circle City’s discrimination lawsuit against Dish.

In the ruling, Judge Tanya Walton Pratt noted that “Dish refused to contract with [Circle City] for the payment of fees for that right, for the longest time offering zero dollars, and at the eleventh hour offering only pennies per subscriber.“

Lawyers for Dish Network notified the court and Circle City that they want those last 17 words removed from the public record. 

WISH covered the situation on its website with the headline: “Exposed: 17 words Dish Network doesn’t want you to read.”

The story says that Dish wants to conceal the information from viewers and from Dish subscribers, who have been unable to watch the Circle City stations via satellite for three years. 

How much distributors pay to carry TV stations and networks is usually a closely guarded secret.

Circle City owner and CEO DuJuan McCoy sued Dish and DirecTV charging that the satellite companies were refusing to pay retransmission fees for WISH and WNDY because they were now owned by a Black-owned company.

The satellite companies paid for the stations when they were owned by Nexstar, which sold them to McCoy.

In similar rulings, Pratt dismissed both cases. “There is no evidence in the record to support the claim that racial discrimination caused Dish to discriminate against Circle City or create a triable issue of fact,” she ruled. 

McCoy said he would appeal the decision.

A U.S. District Court Judge on Friday dismissed lawsuits brought by Circle City Broadcasting charging that DirecTV and Dish Network discriminated against Circle City because it was a Black-owned business.

Circle City owner Dujuan McCoy said he planned to appeal the decision. He also said he would work to prevent satellite-TV providers DirecTV and Dish from merging.

Circle City acquired WISH and WNDY in Indianapolis from Nexstar Media Group for $42.5 million in 2019. Around the time of the purchase, Nexstar signed new retransmission consent deals with the satellite providers. Those deals stated that if WISH or WNDY were sold, their retransmission rights would no longer be governed by the Nexstar agreements, according to court papers.

That meant Circle City had to make new deals with DirecTV and Dish.

DirecTV said that it did not pay retrans fees to standalone non-Big Four network stations and offered to carry it without paying a fee. WISH is an affiliate of The CW; WNDY carries MyNetwork TV. Dish offered a lower price, noting that Nexstar had much more leverage in retrans negotiations than Circle City did.

Circle City argued that the reason it was being offered less for its retrans rights was because the stations were now owned by a Black-owned business.

Chief Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana granted summary judgments to both DirecTV and Dish in separate but similar decisions.

“While Circle City did not like how DirecTV chose to negotiate with it, nothing in the record connects any of these actions to some form of racial animus or intent to discriminate based on race,” Pratt ruled in dismissing the suit against DirecTV.

“We are pleased Judge Pratt recognized our non-discriminatory approach to retransmission consent negotiations with Circle City Broadcasting,” DirecTV said in a statement. ”Our differences have always been economic, and this positive ruling reaffirms our commitment to negotiate in good faith while constantly striving to keep costs as low as possible for our customers.“

In the Dish case, Pratt pointed out that Melisa Boddie, VP of programming, handled the negotiations for Dish.  Boddie is “a Hispanic woman who is married to a Black male, made no ‘racial comment’ during negotiations and was perceived by McCoy as being ‘polite, civil, and courteous,’ ” Pratt noted.

“There is no evidence in the record to either support the claim that racial discrimination caused Dish or Boddie to discriminate against Circle City or create a triable issue of fact,” Pratt said.

Pratt also ruled that Circle City and Nexstar are not “similarly situated” companies, as Circle City contended.

“There is no dispute that Nexstar, as the largest broadcasting group owning Big Four stations, holds leverage and a negotiating position that far exceeds Circle City’s,“ the judge wrote. “Though Circle City attempts to present Boddie’s statements as Dish’s admission that ownership did not matter, the size difference between the two companies clearly and reasonably influenced negotiations.”

In its negotiations with two other distributors, cable operators Comcast and Charter Communications, Circle City agreed to rates lower than Nexstar had been getting, according to the decision. Dish had been offering zero dollars for retransmission and made a last-minute offer that amounted to only pennies per subscriber that was rejected by Circle City.

After the ruling, McCoy maintained his stance that the satellite companies discriminated against Circle City.

“Although we are disappointed in the court’s ruling, I have always known as one of the few Black media entrepreneurs in America that the fight for equality in media is always going to be difficult,” McCoy said in a statement. “We firmly believe that Dish and AT&T [which spun off DirecTV but still owns a major stake] are both discriminatory companies in contracting. Separately and individually they discriminate!”

McCoy noted that there have been statements by Dish chairman Charlie Ergen that he is seeking a merger with DirecTV.

“If they discriminate individually, they will surely continue and increase their discriminatory practices as one company,” McCoy said. “We plan to appeal this decision as well as do everything in our power to prevent their rumored merger from happening. It would be a sad day in media if regulators allowed this rumored monopolistic transaction to consummate.” ■

Dish Network ended 2022 with some of the most downer data the U.S. pay TV business has ever seen, losing another 191,000 satellite TV customers and 77,000 virtual Sling TV subscribers in the final three months of the year. 

Dish, which won't formally announce Q4 earnings until sometime next month, made the disclosure in an SEC filing Tuesday, in conjunction with the revelation of a $500 million secured debt offering. 

While the nominal rate of decline for Dish satellite didn't increase -- the company bled 203,000 satellite customers in the fourth quarter of 2021 -- the overall erosion rate reached a record 9.8%, usurping the 9.7% bleed rate in Q3 and the 8.9% erosion experienced in the second quarter. 

As equity research company MoffettNathanson noted, Dish satellite's remaining base of just over 7.4 million subscribers is about a third of its peak 2009 size.  

Meanwhile, Sling TV's remaining base of 2.334 million subscribers puts its size roughly where it stood in early 2018, just three years after launch. Its losses, combined with Dish satellite, put Dish's total pay TV erosion in the fourth quarter at 8.9%. 

Dish is the fourth largest pay TV company in the U.S., based on subscriber reach. Its customer bleed rate approached No. 1 pay TV company Comcast in 2022 -- Comcast lost customers at a rate exceeding 10%. 

The losses, which accompany another 24,000 customer defections for Dish's Boost Mobile MVNO-based retail wireless business, aren't shocking. But their pace of decline is concerning for a telecom that's in a race against time -- and acquired capital resources -- to build out its own wireless network, as agreed to under federal consent decree. 

As was also stated in Tuesday's SEC filing, Dish broke ground on its target of 15,000 microcells, with the expectation that those cells will cover 60% of the U.S. population.

Over the next two years, as Dish looks to fund this pricy buildout, analyst Craig Moffett noted Tuesday, investors are probably in for a wild ride.

"While they have used debt thus far, there is a growing expectation that their convertibles will need to be equitized, resulting in meaningful equity dilution," Moffett wrote. ■

Dish Network subscribers have lost satellite access to stations owned by Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting because of a fee dispute.

About 850,000 Dish households are affected. Mission has about 30 stations, including WPIX-TV in New York in the Dish footprint. Two White Knight stations are involved. 

“Both programming groups rejected Dish’s contract extension offers to keep programming available for customers while we continue to negotiate,” said Brian Neylon, group president, Dish TV. “We’re disappointed Mission and White Knight have chosen this course of action. The demanded fees are unreasonable given that Mission and White Knight’s viewership on Dish have significantly declined over the past three years, indicating that many viewers have moved to other channels for programming they prefer.”

Speaking for Mission Broadcasting, Mission President Dennis Thatcher said: "We were unable to agree about an extension and our contract has expired."

Mission is currently in a fee dispute with DirecTV that started in October, Mission’s WPIX was also blacked out to Comcast subscribers during December.

Dish is also involved in a blackout of Cox Media Group stations.

“Broadcasters like Mission and White Knight often block customer access as they negotiate for higher rates,” added Neylon. “We will continue to fight on behalf of Dish customers to keep prices as low as possible. We hope Mission and White Knight will continue to negotiate with us in good faith so we can minimize the disruption to our customers.”

The stations are operated by Nexstar Media Group under local management agreements, but Nexstar said it doesn't handle retransmission consent fee negotiations.

“The television stations involved in this carriage dispute are owned by and licensed to Mission Broadcasting, Inc. and White Knight Broadcasting, Inc.  They are not owned by Nexstar Media Group, Inc., and Nexstar has no role in the negotiations between Dish and either of these companies," Nexstar said in a statement. 

White Knight stations affected are WVLA-TV in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and KFXK-TV, in the Tyler-Longview-Lufkin, Texas market. ■

Hopefully readers had a Happy New Year, but there‘s no holiday for many in the industry who have to deal with issues ranging from the cost of streaming to cord-cutting to a weak economy.

Here’s a list of executives at key companies facing big challenges and questions. We’ll be following them to see what solutions they come up with.

Also: 2023 Predictions: Streaming Grows with Advertising and Measurement Follows

Jeff Shell, Comcast

Jeff Shell, as CEO of Comcast’s NBCUniversal business, is in charge of the cable giant’s media assets at a time when the media business is under pressure and perhaps a questionable investment. Other media companies have doubled down on streaming and, while already losing billions of dollars, NBCU’s Peacock remains tiny. Comcast might opt to buy Disney’s majority stake in Hulu rather than sell its own minority stake to Disney. Or Comcast could spin off NBCU, or maybe merge it with Warner Bros. Discovery or Paramount to gain scale. Either way Shell will have an important seat at Comcast scion Brian Roberts’s table.

Chris Licht, CNN

Everyone at Warner Bros. Discovery is on a hot seat fueled by $50 billion in debt. Big things need to be done, including the creation of a new direct-to-consumer streaming service that combines HBO Max and Discovery Plus. But the most pressure is on Chris Licht, who was made head of CNN last year. Licht has already shook up the network’s morning show and primetime schedule and stripped familiar programming from HLN. Hundreds of staffers have lost their jobs and there are no promises that more won’t end up on the chopping block until ratings and revenues pick up.

John Halley, Paramount

John Halley, the head of Paramount ad sales, replaced Jo Ann Ross, the queen of the upfronts. He canceled the company’s iconic Carnegie Hall upfront event in a softening ad market. Paramount owns the most traditional of the traditional broadcasting networks in CBS, while its cable networks — including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon — are challenged by cord-cutting (bright spot: Paramount Network with Yellowstone). No doubt the ad business is changing from touch to tech and from broadcast to streaming, but do Halley and Paramount risk trading broadcast bucks for digital dimes?

David Kenny, Nielsen

David Kenny accomplished the sale of Nielsen to a consortium of private equity companies. How interested is he in trying to maintain Nielsen’s hegemony over the media research business? Can he sell Nielsen One to an industry that is hopeful that converged measurement will become available, but skeptical about Nielsen’s ability to deliver and worried about how much it will cost? Or will he join the half dozen other top Nielsen execs taking the packages made available by the buyout?

Charlie Collier, Roku

The tech giants have turned their attention to TV with Google and Amazon using the mighty NFL as a key part of their programming playbooks. What are streaming-device maker Roku and Charlie Collier, who joined Roku from Fox Entertainment last year, going to do for content? Collier is also in charge of advertising, but Roku will have to attract eyeballs to sell ads. Can he make a big swing, like AMC Networks did when he was there, with a run of iconic shows: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead?

Charlie Ergen, Dish Network

Charlie Ergen, chairman of Dish Network, may have run out of broadcasters to black out. Is it finally time to focus on mobile and get out of the TV business by merging Dish Network with DirecTV? In November, he said the window is open. Is he ready to jump through?

Mike Hopkins, Amazon

Amazon made big inroads into the TV business in 2022. A first exclusive season of Thursday Night Football, the megamillion-dollar series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the rebrand of the Freevee AVOD service. There’s still much to be done. Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM needs to be integrated, a task that might be complicated by the departure of hit-maker and Trump creator Mark Burnett.

David Preschlack, Diamond Sports Group

Veteran TV sports exec David Preschlack in December was named CEO at Diamond Sports Group, the increasingly separate division of Sinclair Broadcast Group that runs the Bally Sports regional sports networks. That gives him the unenviable task of managing shrinking distribution revenue and rising rights costs while improving relationships with the major sports leagues whose streaming rights he needs to reach cord-cutting sports fans. The odds are against business as usual with the smart money betting on a race between bankruptcy and a sale, possibly to those same sports leagues.

Adam Silver, NBA

Adam Silver is commissioner of the National Basketball Association, the next major league whose television rights will be available. With its young, hip fan base, NBA rights will command an increase from the $2 billion currently paid by The Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD CEO David Zaslav recently declared that his company doesn’t need the NBA. Maybe not. But its Turner networks won’t be the same without Inside the NBA. The rights could go to the NBA (with John Tesh’s Roundball Rock theme making a comeback) or Amazon, Apple or Google could line up for a three point shot.

Soo Kim, Standard General

Soo Kim, founder and CEO of Standard General, reached a deal to buy Tegna for $8.6 billion almost a year ago. But the approval process has been unusually protracted. Facing opposition from unions, rival station groups and cable operators, Standard General has stressed the deal would be in the public interest, bringing diversity to the station group’s management. Kim has also made extraordinary promises not to lay off newsroom staff or to leverage Tegna’s size to get better retransmission deals for Standard General but no end is in sight. The delays have been costly. Interest rates are up and the media business has entered a recession, lowering the value of broadcast assets. How long can Kim fight to get this deal approved? Or will he give up and let someone else grab Tegna?

James Dolan, AMC Networks

James Dolan, chairman of AMC Networks, let CEO Christina Spade go in November and announced there would be “large-scale layoffs” at the company. Those layoffs were swiftly executed, with about 20% of the company’s staff being let go. Dolan has become executive chairman at AMC, but it remains to be seen what will happen to the company and whether there’s a place in the industry for a small-scale distributor of high-quality content.

Jeremi Gorman, Netflix

Jeremi Gorman joined Netflix as president of worldwide advertising soon after the streaming giant announced that after being proudly commercial free, it would be selling spots. After making an ad-tech deal with Microsoft, Netflix got its ad tier launched with remarkable speed. But early returns were just that: Netflix had too few ad-tier viewers and had to give money back to sponsors. Gorman will aim to scale up before the upfronts. Pro tip: Carnegie Hall is available. ■

Dish Network has sent the Federal Communications Commission a term sheet it says backs up the claim, cited in a story in Broadcasting+Cable, that Cox Media Group wanted to include both Standard General and Tegna stations in retransmission-consent talks.

Standard General is trying to get the FCC to sign off on its $8 billion-plus deal to acquire the Tegna stations. It has told the regulator it will not bundle Cox and Tegna stations in retrans talks, and Cox has disputed the Dish claim, saying it never has and never will try to do so.

Also: Standard General Says Cox Retrans Deals Won't Apply to Tegna Stations

In a letter and accompanying documents Dish says will provide the FCC with "the facts" regarding that dispute, the satellite operator, which has been in a retrans dispute with CMG, submitted the retrans term sheet — which is entirely redacted in the public version — saying it was sent from Cox to Dish on November 19, 2022.

Dish has previously claimed that Cox, which is controlled by Apollo Global Management--an investor in the Tegna deal--has dragged its feet in retrans discussions because it wants to include stations owned by both Standard General and Tegna.

Dish's FCC filing only says that "the relevant demand from Cox to DISH is found on pages 3-4 of the enclosed term sheet," which is blacked out.

Standard General had not responded to a request for comment at press time.

Tegna, which owns 64 TV stations in 51 U.S. markets, agreed to be acquired by Standard General in February for $8.6 billion including debt. It also owns multicast networks True Crime Network, Twist and Quest and advanced advertising company Premion. ■

Cox Media Group said it sent a cease-and-desist letter to Dish Network demanding the satellite-TV provider retract numerous “false claims” it says are designed to mislead customers about the dispute that resulted in a blackout of Cox’s stations to Dish subscribers this week.

“That fact is, we asked Dish for an extension of our prior contract both in writing and verbally on several different occasions,“ CMG president and CEO Daniel York said. “CMG is now publicly asking Dish yet again to put our market-leading stations back on their satellite platform under the agreement that we both have operated under for years, and we’re again inviting them to finally start engaging in a meaningful good-faith negotiation of a new contract.” 

On Monday, when 12 CMG stations went dark on Dish, Dish sent out a press release that, according to CMG, included “knowingly false statements.”

According to CMG, the claims included that the broadcaster refused to leave the channels up while negotiations continued and that CMG “underinvests in local journalism.”

“Dish’s most egregious lie is that CMG is under-investing in local journalism," said Paul Curran, executive VP of TV for CMG. “The fact is that CMG has increased investment in our news programming and product with transformative investigative journalism and a groundbreaking news and community service initiative that recently received the pinnacle of recognition for local broadcasters, the Service to America award.”

CMG called on Dish to restore the stations and begin to negotiate in good faith. ■

Cox Media Group stations in nine markets have been blacked out to Dish TV subscribers because of a retransmission fee dispute, effective Monday.

Dish said that one issue is Dish is allowing subscribers to opt out of local stations as part of their pay-TV service. Dish says Cox wants Dish to pay fees for those customers.

Dish also said that Cox is looking for an "exorbitant rate increase," and is negotiating for stations it doesn’t own yet.

The dispute affects Cox stations in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Dayton, Eugene, Jacksonville, Orlando, Pittsburgh and Seattle. Cox Media Group is controlled by Apollo Global Management.

Also: Four Standard General Stations Blacked Out in Dispute With Dish

As the year comes to an end, carriage disputes usually become an issue as distribution deals expire. Over the weekend Fox warned that DirectTV subscribers could loose its stations and some of its cable networks when its distribution agreement with DirecTV Friday at midnight Pacific time.

In October, Disney's networks were blacked out on Dish for a day before a new agreement was reached.

"Cox's refusal to negotiate in good faith and subsequently forcing a blackout of its stations for Dish customers is deplorable," said Brian Neylon, group president of Dish TV. "Cox is demanding an exorbitant rate increase, negotiating for channels it does not yet own and insists on payment from customers who do not subscribe to local broadcasting, even as it continues to underinvest in local programming. Broadcasters like Cox put profits ahead of the public interests they are supposed to serve, even when its viewership has declined for years."

Dish noted that Cox’s viewership on Dish TV has significantly declined, Despite the decline, Cox is demanding rate increase of nearly 75%.

"We are deeply disappointed in Cox's decision to remove its channels from DISH after attempting to force an unjustifiable fee increase that directly impacts our customers," said Neylon. "We can't sit by and accept Cox's unreasonable demands. We will continue fighting on behalf of our customers to come to a fair deal that is beneficial for all."

On the website of Cox’s WSB-TV, Atlanta, the broadcaster says that “the satellite provider refused to agree to a fair deal for a new retransmission consent agreement.”  It urges viewers to call Dish to demand the return of local programming. “CMG is hopeful that Dish will abandon its well-worn path of blacking out TV stations to the detriment of consumers in favor of meaningful negotiations toward a fair deal.” ■

Dish Network said it's offering a three-year "price guarantee" to new customers committing for two years to its "America's Top" satellite TV bundles, which start at $79.99 a month.

“Consumers today are facing real challenges when it comes to managing their finances,” said Brian Neylon, group president for Dish, in a statement. “We’re proud to announce stability for Dish customers with a three-year TV price guarantee that enables households to easily budget their entertainment costs through 2025 and beyond.”

Dish's press release wasn't terribly explicit in terms of what the pay TV company is actually guaranteeing. Will it also cover charges on associated CPE, such as the Hopper Plus set-top box? How about surcharges on regional sports networks and local channels? FCC-related fees? Taxes?

"Taxes are not included and subject to change," a Dish rep told Next TV via email. "Since Dish is customer-first, we don’t actually tack on a bunch of fees like the competition. Dish does not have a regional sports network fee (like our competitors) or separate retrans fees."

As the "local channels fee" on this Dish billing statement from 2021 shows, we'd probably check the ol' fine print before committing around $100 month for two year's of the pay TV Full Monty.

Dish lost another 184,000 satellite TV subscribers in the third quarter, whittling its base to just over 7.6 million customers. In the 12 months ending Sept. 30, Dish lost 14.3% of its satellite TV customers -- an attrition rate higher than even Comcast's 10.6% pace of blood loss.

So Neylon can profess a bleeding heart for the consumer all he wants, but Dish needs to find a way to reduce customer churn if it's going to stay in the pay TV game.

“TV entertainment should be effortless. We’re proud that time and time again we’ve had our customers’ backs,” Neylon added. “Alongside our three-year TV price guarantee, Dish customers deserve the best viewing experience in the industry and our next-generation Hopper Plus and award-winning Hopper whole-home DVR system, Chromecast built-in, and Dish Voice Remote with Google Assistant make TV simpler.” ■

Paducah Television Operations, a subsidiary of Standard General, said its four stations have been blacked out to Dish Network subscribers in a dispute over retransmission consent fees.

Paducah Television, based in Providence, operates stations, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cape Girardeau, Missouri and Providence, Rhode Island and does business as Standard Media, said Dish refused offers from Standard Media and was insisting on significant rate reductions.

Standard General has agreed to buy Tegna, but the deal is in the middle of a lengthy review by the FCC. Among the deal's opponents are cable operators concerned that Standard General will try to raise retransmission fees.

The Walt Disney Co.’s stations and cable networks were briefly backed out by Dish, but the two companies quickly came to a settlement last month. Dish is among the distributors most likely to be involved in a fee dispute when distribution deals expire.

In a statement, Standard Media said it has tried to reach a deal with Dish. 

“Throughout this period, the parties have agreed to multiple extensions to permit negotiations to continue without an impact on viewers. Even though the parties continue to negotiate, Dish has taken the inexplicable position that it will no longer carry the stations during the negotiations. Our stations therefore will no longer be accessible through Dish. This is Dish's choice, and not what we prefer,” the company said.

“With just four local stations, Standard Media is a small station owner. We take seriously our responsibility in providing critical and current news to local communities. While Dish is willing to resell our valuable content that drives their viewership, they do not want to pay for it,” Standard Media said.

Standard Media said it will continue to negotiate in good faith and hopes Dish will enter into a “reasonable” agreement.  ■

The Walt Disney Co.’s portfolio of cable networks and owned local stations were blacked out to customers of Dish Network and Sling TV Saturday morning when a new distribution contract could not be reached.

Dish claimed on its website that Disney is seeking to make Dish subscribers pay nearly $1 billion more for its channels than they currently pay.

The blackout affects nearly 10 million households, including 7.8 million satellite customers and 2.2 million homes that stream with Sling TV.

The dispute comes at a time when Disney — like many other media companies — is prioritizing its direct-to-consumer streaming services over traditional pay TV channels. That trend is accelerating cord cutting. According to one analysis, the number of pay TV subscribers fell 6.1% in the second quarter.

Dish is no stranger to carriage disputes. This week it ended a three-week blackout with Game Show Network.

A Disney blackout is a much bigger deal, affecting channels including ESPN, which alone costs distributors more than $8 per subscriber per month, the most of any cable network. 

Dish has been shedding customers who consider themselves sports fans by no longer carrying regional sports networks, another expensive programming source. It currently offers some packages that do not include ESPN and ESPN2, but said Disney was looking to force customers with those packages to pay for ESPN. 

Dish accused Disney of taking advantage of its size to demand unreasonable rates for its programming and said it was preying on rural customers with no alternative to satellite (without mentioning DirecTV).

“Disney has exploited its market position to increase fees without regard for the public viewing experience,” Brian Neylon, executive VP and group president of Dish TV, said in a statement. “Clearly, Disney insists on prioritizing greed above American viewers, especially sports fans and families with children who watch their content.”

Dish noted that Disney was spending billions on Disney Plus and ESPN Plus, which are not included in Dish and Sling subscriptions.

“After months of negotiating in good faith, Dish has declined to reach a fair, market-based agreement with us for continued distribution of our networks. As a result, their Dish and Sling TV subscribers have lost access to our unrivaled portfolio of live sports and news plus kids, family and general entertainment programming,” Disney said in a statement. "The rates and terms we are seeking reflect the marketplace and have been the foundation for numerous successful deals with pay TV providers of all types and sizes across the country. We’re committed to reaching a fair resolution, and we urge Dish to work with us in order to minimize the disruption to their customers."

Affected are the ABC Owned Television Stations in seven markets, the ESPN networks, the Disney-branded channels, Freeform, the FX networks, the National Geographic channels and BabyTV.

On its website Dish said that it offered an extension to keep Disney's local station in Raleigh, N.C., available to viewers, but Disney wouldn't agree to that. "They took away important weather and local news from our customers in this area at a critical time," Dish said.

"We will continue to negotiate to provide the best value for our customers. We want to provide customers with fair rates, reliable service and the freedom of choice to pay for the channels they watch most,” said Gary Schanman, executive VP and group president, Sling TV. “Disney is an important long-term partner for us, and we hope they will be reasonable in their demands so we can reach a fair agreement and bring our customers' channels back as quickly as possible.”  ■

Dish Media said it is enabling advertisers to access national linear TV inventory using real-time programmatic technology it developed with Beachfront and Seachange International.

The technology is more flexible for buyers and allows the to plan linear alongside their digital and over-the-top buys for a more holistic view. It will also bring a bigger range of buyers to linear TV, the companies said. 

“Pioneering this new capability is another step in our effort to build more open and interoperable solutions for our advertisers,” said Kevin Arrix, senior VP, Dish Media. “The television marketplace is evolving, and providing our valuable linear TV inventory via programmatic technology is another positive step in this direction.”

Also Read: Beachfront, SeaChange Enable Programmatic for Cable Operators

Viant is the first demand-side platform to use the new technology, Dish said. 

“This exciting new offering is a great option for digital-first buyers who want to expand their reach and take advantage of Dish’s linear footprint,” said Jonathan Ahuna, senior VP of operations, Viant. “It delivers a one-two combination of being able to buy ads seconds before the ads’ airing, then, through the power of Viant’s Adelphic DSP, quickly report out on the buy, vastly reducing the traditional delay of linear reporting.”

Dish’s National Linear Programmatic capabilities covers 7 million households with Beachfront providing its sell-side ad serving built for convergent TV, and Seachange providing video delivery and ad insertion.

“Enabling new and incremental advertising capabilities for DISH TV with our Advanced Advertising Platform is a true milestone in our quest to optimize ad yield for operators globally. Adopting the principles of addressability and automation from the digital landscape to enable real-time auctions for linear TV through industry-standard digital advertising marketplaces is a gamechanger and a growth milestone for the industry,” said Chris Klimmer, president, SeaChange. “Together with Beachfront, we will continue our mission to optimize ad yield for operators by attracting additional advertisers, enabling real-time bidding and automating ad sales.” 

Also Read: Beachfront Brings Systems Together to Make Linear Ads Programmatic

“Having Dish-TV deploy an automated solution is truly going to accelerate the growth of programmatic capabilities in the industry, particularly for TV media buyers, programmers, and distributors,” added Beachfront CEO Chris Maccaro. “Advertisers are constantly looking for the fastest, most efficient use of time and money. Having access to DISH TV’s national linear TV inventory with the tools required to get a campaign live in a day will provide a lot of new flexibility.” ■

Game Show Network has been blacked out to Dish Network satellite-TV customers and Sling TV virtual MVPD subscribers in a carriage dispute.

“We have been working with Game Show Network for months to finalize a fair agreement for our customers,” Dish senior VP of programming Andy LeCuyer said. “Unfortunately, Game Show Network made the decision to remove its service from Dish and Sling, backpedaling out of a handshake agreement to continue carriage of their service on our platforms. This is a deceitful negotiation tactic aimed at our customers, putting them in the middle.”

Dish said it remains open to working with GSN to reach a fair agreement and hopes to restore the channel soon.

“We’re deeply disappointed in Game Show Network’s decision to remove its channel at the expense of its viewers,” LeCuyer said. "We will continue fighting on behalf of our customers to come to a fair deal that is beneficial for all."

In a statement, GSN said it tried to get a deal done with Dish, “but after eight months of negotiations we could not agree to their demands.”

GSN noted that Dish has previously removed stations seeking retransmission payments and regional sports networks. "Dish is choosing to do this to Game Show Network, an independent network, that costs virtually nothing compared to local retransmission or sports networks,” it said.

On its website, GSN warned Dish subscribers they could lose the channels and urged them to get in contact with the satellite operator. 

Dish noted that its subscribers could still watch many popular Game Show Network programs via Pluto TV. It added that new episodes of Family Feud can be found on ABC. 

GSN is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, which bought out a minority interest held by satellite-TV rival DirecTV in 2019. ■

Dish Network's live streaming service, Sling TV, has once again hit the growth skids, losing 55,000 customers in the second quarter.

It was the second consecutive quarterly loss for the virtual pay TV service, which bled out 234,000 subscribers in Q1. The Q2 loss also compares unfavorably to growth of 65,000 customers in the same three-month period of 2021.

"There will be some fallout and consolidation in the OTT market, but we're profitable," insisted Charlie Ergen, Chairman of Sling TV parent company Dish Network, during Wednesday's Q2 earnings call. "We're well positioned for things that might happen."

Sling TV finished June with 2.197 million remaining subscribers, less than half the total currently touted by the leader of the vMVPD category, YouTube TV.

Sling TV, which launched in February 2015, now has fewer customers than it did when it finished the second quarter of 2020.

The platform raised prices in January, upping the price of its two main tiers, Sling Orange and Sling Blue, by $5 to $35 each. Notably, Sling TV has eschewed some pricey programming to sustain is relatively low price rate. For example, it doesn't pay broadcast retransmission fees for CBS and ABC. 

Economics aside, Dish's 7-year-old live streaming service does seem to be flirting with irrelevance. Writing about the shortcut buttons on the Roku remote in a story published earlier this week, for instance, Vox Media's influential tech blog The Verge quipped, "Imagine that someone once received the worst remote ever, only featuring buttons for streaming services they never use like Sling, Rdio, PlayStation Vue, and Quobo. Points if you can guess which one of those is made up without googling."

Yeah, among the technorati these days, Sling TV is now classified with defunct streaming services like Vue ... and those that don't even exist.

"We're not happy where Sling growth is," conceded Sling TV CEO Erik Carlson, citing what he described as currently a "very spiky market" for subscription OTT services.

Dish Network is still in the early phases of its national rollout of a 5G wireless network, a topic that consumes most of its public discussion these days.

"After food, water and shelter, [wireless] is about fourth in line in terms of consumer need, and we're the fourth biggest player there," Ergen said. 

When Dish's $10 billion quest to complete its cloud-native, Open Radio Access Network (“O-RAN”)-based 5G network culminates in 2025 (or so it hopes), he added, Dish will "become a Fortune 100 company."

That is, of course, if market conditions hold up ... and interest rates on the money Dish keeps needing to borrow for its buildout, which are now well above 5%, don't b become unsustainable.

Yeah, if you're a Dish investor, that ol' George Michael song about "faith" plays in your head a lot these day. Notably, Dish shares were up over 6% during active trading on Wednesday.

In the meantime, Dish's legacy pay TV platforms continue to erode. Dish satellite TV lost another 202,000 customers in the second quarter. Dish's total satellite TV customer base now totals under 7.8 million.

Dish also lost 210,000 wireless customers in the quarter, mainly from legacy retail services it acquired.

Overall Dish revenue declined just over 5% in the second quarter to $4.03 billion. ■

Dish Network said it lost about 202,000 satellite subscribers and 55,000 Sling TV customers in the second quarter as viewers continued to leave traditional pay TV.

Net income fell 22% to $623 million, or 82 cents a share, from $671 million ($1.06 a share) a year ago. Revenue dropped 6%, to $4.21 billion.

Dish said it finished the quarter with 9.988 million pay-TV subscribers (satellite and virtual), down from 10.246 million in the first quarter. Dish had 10.993 million pay-TV customers a year ago.

Also: Cord Cutting Quickens in Q2 for Comcast, Charter and Verizon, But Where Are All of Those Customers Going?

Dish had 7.791 million satellite TV customers at the end of the second quarter, down from 7.993 million at the end of the first quarter and 8.554 million at the end of the second quarter a year earlier.

Dish’s Sling TV virtual MVPD ended the first quarter with 2.197 million subscribers, down from 2.252 million in the first quarter. A year ago Sling had 2.439 million customers.

Sling was one of the first broadband based pay-TV providers. Recently, Google said its YouTube TV vMVPD had topped the 5 million subscriber mark.

Dish said average revenue per customer (ARPU) was up, though, to $101.30 in the second quarter, from $99.44 in the first quarter and $96.32 a year ago. ■

Dish Network said it is launching TelevisaUnivision’s new ViX Plus subscription streaming service on its satellite TV and Sling TV platforms.

Dish and Sling customers will be able to subscribe to ViX directly through their pay TV services.

ViX Plus costs $6.99 a month.

Also: TelevisaUnivision’s ViX Plus SVOD Available Free to T-Mobile Subscribers

"We're excited to expand our robust Spanish-language content offering with the addition of ViX Plus available now on Dish and Sling," said Alfredo Rodríguez, VP, DishLatino. "Offering consumers a broad range of content has long been a core Dish tenet and the launch of ViX Plus to both satellite and streaming customers builds on our longstanding tradition of being the leading provider of Spanish-language programming with more Spanish channels than anyone else."

Dish and Univision had a nearly year-long carriage dispute that started in 2018 and ended in 2019.

ViX Plus will give viewers access to 70 original series and movies in its first year, plus 4,000 hours of live sport coverage.

Dish TV offers ViX Plus subscriptions through internet-connected Hopper and Wally devices.

ViX Plus is available as a standalone streaming service through the Sling app on all supported device platforms including Roku, Amazon, LG and Vizio.   ■

Charlie Ergen and Elon Musk continue to battle at the FCC over how to divvy up the skies and FCC spectrum.

Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen and other company executives met with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and the other FCC commissioners last week to update the commission on its 5G buildout status and try to quash any suggestion that opening up the 12 GHz satellite spectrum for more terrestrial 5G real estate threatened to interfere with Starlink's satellite broadband service.

That is according to FCC documents on a series of meetings July 12.

Starlink, which uses a ring of low-earth-orbit satellites to deliver broadband--including famously to Ukraine during the war with Russia--is owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

As part of the T-Mobile/Sprint Merger, T-Mobile sold  its prepaid wireless business to Dish and opened its network to Dish for a half dozen years to the company could become a legitimate wireless competitor since the merger was further concentrating the market.

Also: FCC Flooded with Nearly Identical Comments Opposing Opening 12 GHz

Ergen and company told the FCC that as of June 14, Dish was offering 5G to over 20% of the country.

On the 12 GHz front, it said that opening up 500 MHz of midband spectrum would not interfere with Starlink's customers and that Starlink was engaged in an "ongoing misinformation campaign" that was "both scientifically and logically flawed."

Dish said that Starlink's evidence of such interference is skewed because 1) it used a single case--Las Vegas--that had unique "topology and morphology" that could not be extrapolated nationwide; 2) it assumes "overdeployment" of 5G towers; and 3) it says the majority of receive terminals in Las Vegas would be in urban and suburban areas while at the same time having said Starlink is targeted to sparsely populated regions.

Ergen and the executives reminded the FCC that it, too, is a user of the satellite spectrum for its DBS service and has no interest in harming its own customers or anyone else's.

SpaceX has reminded the FCC that Dish was against sharing before it was for it (https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/file/download/DOC-5fe748dcf4800000-A.pdf?file_name=SpaceX%20Further%20Response%20to%20DISH%20re%20Peters%20Studies%20%20(3-18-22).pdf), and calls Dish's defense of sharing now a "bizarre" assertion proffered through "a series of convoluted arguments that misrepresent both the assumptions and conclusions of [SpaceX interference] studies." SpaceX says that Dish's submissions claiming "minimal" interference have been debunked.

Back in 2020, the FCC sought comment on whether and how to allow terrestrial use while protecting incumbent users. The FCC has been all for sharing spectrum to meet the 5G need and is expected to do so with the 12 GHz band as well. In January 2021 it did just that, voting unanimously to propose opening up that 500 GHz midband spectrum for unlicensed 5G use.

The band is currently used for DBS, fixed satellite service multichannel video and data service (MVDDS), like Starlink's broadband service. All are co-primary users, but DBS must be protected from interference. ■

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has backed the FCC's decision that Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless were under Dish's control when they successfully bid $13 billion in wireless licenses in the AWS-3 auction, and thus did not qualify for the over $3 billion in bidding discounts that brought the price down to $10 billion.

The two companies teamed with Dish to acquire $10 billion worth of spectrum licenses in the auction. But the FCC subsequently concluded that Dish's majority financial interest in the companies were controlling interests that should be attributable to Dish, which meant the companies were ineligible for the $1.9 billion (Northstar) and $1.4 billion (SNR Wireless) bidding credits they had applied for.

Dish had put up most of the $10 billion.

The companies appealed the FCC decision to the D.C. Circuit, which in August 2017 upheld the finding that Dish exercised de facto control, but also held that the FCC, under then chair Tom Wheeler, failed to notify the companies that if the FCC found they did not qualify for the credits, worth billions of dollars, the FCC would not give them a chance to cure that problem and instructed the FCC to correct.

The FCC provided that chance to cure the problem, but still ruled the subsequent new filings did not change its conclusion that Dish was both he biggest investor and in de facto control of Northstar and SNR and so did not deserve the designated entity bidding credit.

Also: Dish Makes Case for AWS-3 Bids

The companies then challenged that 2020 decision (under Republican Chairman Ajit Pai) in the D.C. circuit, saying the FCC "flouted this court’s orders in SNR Wireless by not working closely enough with them to reduce Dish’s control, wrongfully found them to be controlled by Dish, and penalized them without fair notice."

Wrong, wrong and wrong, the court said Tuesday in upholding the FCC. It said the FCC had provided the requisite opportunity to cure and "reasonably applied its precedent to the companies and gave them fair notice of the legal standards that it would apply in analyzing their claims to be very small companies," claims the FCC rejected. ■

After signing a $5 billion MVNO agreement with AT&T last summer, Dish is getting further into business with the Dallas wireless giant, agreeing to sell AT&T fiber home internet service to satellite TV and its own wireless customers. 

"Dish is always looking for ways to improve the overall customer experience," said Amir Ahmed, executive VP of Dish TV. "Adding AT&T Internet to our robust lineup of TV and home integration services enhances our ability to provide better overall service, technology and value to our customers."

Dish already bundles ISP services from Frontier, Cox and CenturyLink. However, with AT&T spinning off Dish's satellite TV rival, DirecTV, last summer, there seems to be a lot of discussion between the two companies. 

Notably, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen continues to describe a merger between the companies' respective satellite TV services as "inevitable."

" Through this new arrangement with Dish, we're able to do just that by seamlessly offering our super-fast broadband services to more customers across the nation," said Jenifer Robertson, executive VP and general manager of mass markets for AT&T Communications. "This is another step towards our goal of becoming the best broadband provider in America." ■

Dish Network said it lost 462,000 customers in the first quarter, a big drop compared to the 273,000 subs it lost in the fourth quarter and 230,000 a year ago.

Cord-cutting continued with Dish finishing the quarter with 10.24 million pay-TV subscribers, down from 10.71 million in the fourth quarter and 11.06 million a year ago.

Dish’s Sling TV streaming virtual MVPD lost 240,000 subscribers, finishing the quarter with 2.25 million customers. Sling finished the fourth quarter with 2.49 million subscribers and had 2.37 million subscribers a year ago. 

Also: Dish Network Stock Hits New 52-Week Low

Sling TV had a $5 price increase during last year’s fourth quarter.

Satellite subscribers declined to 7.99 million from 8.22 million in the fourth quarter and 8.69 million a year ago.

First quarter earnings dropped 31% to $433 million, or 68 cents a share, from $630 million, or 99 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue fell 6% to $4.33 billion from $4.59 billion a year ago. ■

Tegna announced that it has reached a new carriage deal with Dish Network, ending a blackout that began October 7.

The dispute over retransmission consent fees and other issues affected 3 million Dish customers in 53 markets.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Dish subscribers have missed the bulk of the NFL season, but will be able to watch the Super Bowl on Tegna's NBC affiliates as a result of the agreement. They will also be able to watch NBC's coverage of the Olympics.

Dish founder Charlie Ergen conceded that the blackout was costing Dish subscribers while discussing third-quarter earnings in November.

Also: Verizon and Tegna Reach Agreement on New Retrans Deal, End Blackout

“We are pleased to announce that we have reached a new agreement with DISH, restoring our valuable and important live local news, live local and national sports and highly popular network content to Dish TV subscribers,” said Lynn Beall, executive VP and chief operating officer, media operations for Tegna. “We appreciate the patience of our viewers while we worked toward reaching an agreement.”

Tegna has been rumored to be considering a deal to sell the company. Tegna stock was up 7% on Friday on a report that it was in advanced talks with Standard General, who mounted a proxy fight with Tegna management last year. A deal with Standard General could be backed by Apollo Global Management, which already owns the Cox Media Group. Byron Allen's Allen Media Group has also reportedly been bidding for Tegna.

Also: Cable Retrans Blackouts Declined Sharply in 2021, But 2022 Could See an Uptick in Disputes

The agreement includes retransmission consent for all 64 Tegna-owned stations.

“We‘re pleased to have reached an agreement in time for the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl that benefits all parties, especially our customers,” said Brian Neylon, group president, Dish TV. “I want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding as we worked through the negotiations.”

Shortly after the blackout began, Dish Network filed a complaint with the FCC charging that Tegna was not negotiating in good faith. Tegna responded calling Dish's charges baseless and filing its own suit charging Dish had been making false claims.

Dish averted a blackout with Sinclair Broadcast Group, making a deal in November. The Sinclair stations stayed available to Dish subscribers on short-term extensions that began when the previous long-term deal expired in August. ■ 

AT&T was the big winner in the FCC's 2.45 GHz 5G auction, with the largest gross total at $9,079,177,491 and the most licenses won at 1,624.

The assignment phase of the auction closed earlier this month following the clock phase, which ended in November.

Number two in gross winning bids was Dish, doing business as Weminuche LLC at $7,327,989,290. It was followed by T-Mobile in third at $2,898,418,995, Three Forty-Five Spectrum, LLC at number four with $1,379,489,483, and United States Cellular Corp. number five at $579,646,526.

The FCC auctioned 100 MHz of spectrum in the 3.45 GHz band that the Department of Defense said it was willing to give up/share so long as its operations--radar for example--are protected from interference. Winners can use the spectrum for either fixed or mobile service.

Congress mandated that the spectrum had to be auctioned by the end of 2021.

The auction had long ago met its reserve price of $14.775 billion, which is 110% of the cost of relocating incumbents, which Congress also mandated. The gross total will be whittled down a bit by tribal and small business bidding credits.

The 4,060 flexible-use 15-year renewable licenses auctioned comprise 10 spectrum blocks in each partial economic area (PEA), some with sharing requirements.

AT&T was the second-biggest winner in the C-Band spectrum auction last year at $23,406,860,839 for 1,621 licenses.

But the FCC was emphasizing that it was not just big winners.

The FCC said that 13 of the 23 winning bidders qualified as small businesses or ones that serve rural communities, with over a third of the top 100 markets having at least four winning bidders. "This broader range and distribution of winning bidders will increase competition by providing a diversity of wireless carriers with the mid-band spectrum resources needed to maintain American leadership in 5G," the FCC said.

"Today’s 3.45 GHz auction results demonstrate that the Commission’s pivot to mid-band spectrum for 5G was the right move,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “I am pleased to see that this auction also is creating opportunities for a wider variety of competitors, including small businesses and rural service providers. This is a direct result of the Commission’s efforts to structure this auction with diversity and competition front of mind." ■

About a year after it purchased a 30% interest in DirecTV for a bargain price, private equity firm TPG Capital is reportedly in talks with Dish Network about a possible merger of the satellite giants, a move that while familiar, nevertheless managed to boost Dish stock about 10% in the past two days.

Dish shares were up about 4% ($1.43 per share) to $35.38 on January 11 and rose another 4% to $36.83 at 11:03 a.m. on January 12. 

The New York Post reported January 11 that TPG and Dish were in advanced talks concerning DirecTV, but that the deal has hit a potential snag amid Dish founder and chairman Charlie Ergen’s supposed demands for a big chunk of voting shares and a greater say in decision making for the combined company. Together, Dish and DirecTV would become the largest pay TV distributor in the country with about 23 million subscribers, edging out Comcast by a few million customers, but coming during a time when consumers have been canceling their pricey video subscriptions for streaming services.    

Talks of a Dish-DirecTV merger have been around for decades. The two first stepped to the merger podium in 2001, only to be shot down by federal regulators. With the satellite business in steep decline — Dish has lost 5 million TV customers and DirecTV has shed 10 million since 2017 — some have speculated that the government may be more open to a merger this time around.

Whether federal regulators would approve a deal this time isn't a given. Just two years ago, the U.S. Justice Department let Dish know that it would not sign off on a merger. Maybe that stance has softened, maybe not.

Ergen has said for years that he believed a merger with DirecTV was “inevitable,” and some have claimed a combined Dish-DirecTV would have about $1 billion in cost synergies. 

Every single business in the pay TV space — distributor, content provider, streamer — wants additional scale, and having 23 million TV subscribers (15 million from DirecTV, 8 million from Dish) would deliver that, at least for the short term. Federal plans to pump about $65 billion to help extend broadband into more rural markets could also bode well for a merger. 

From a financial standpoint, the idea that a deal could be done cheaply for the parties involved also makes it more palatable. TPG bought its 30% interest in DirecTV last year for a price that valued the entire company at about $16.5 billion. AT&T paid about $66 billion for DirecTV in 2017. 

Also: AT&T and TPG: There is No Why 

Still, on the surface, putting together two companies in steep decline only seems to prolong the inevitable race to zero customers. But others say that any delay to that apocalyptic conclusion could have some real economic value and short-term benefit for consumers. 

Also: Satellite TV: Five Years, that’s All You’ve Got 

In an email message, MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett said that while he has no idea whether talks between the two companies are actually going on, a merger deal has made sense for a long time. 

“Satellite TV will remain the only available option for rural Americans for some time — rural broadband buildouts take time — and ultimately regulators will have to take that into consideration,” Moffett said in the email. “Is one stronger satellite operator better for rural Americans than two weaker ones?”

Sanford Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino said in an email that a merger seemed plausible because “the point is to capture the efficiencies of putting the two companies together.”

Also: Getting Rid of DirecTV Won’t Be So Easy 

He added that combined EBITDA would be billions of dollars more than what the two generate today, and there are opportunities to reduce programming, network, subscriber acquisition and retention costs, as well as general and administrative expenses (G&A).

And even though Dish has shifted its focus to wireless — it is currently in the throes of building out its network — a DirecTV combination could provide a valuable cache of future mobile customers. 

More Mobile Opportunity

“The satellite TV business’s value to Dish is primarily financial, but to the extent Dish becomes more active in the future in the mobile services business, those TV subs represent potential customers to which Dish could market efficiently,” Supino said.

He added that Dish’s pitch to the Federal Communications Commission for the deal could be that the merger could curb future programming cost inflation by giving the combined company more bargaining power, and a merger would allow satellite TV to survive for a longer period. 

LightShed TMT Partners partner and media and technology analyst Rich Greenfield predicted that Dish and DirecTV would get together this year, part of his January Top 22 TMT Predictions for 2022. While talk of a combination has gone on for years, only to be quashed by regulators, he said believes this is the year for a combination to take place. 

“No, really,” Greenfield wrote. “We believe the regulatory risks today are not high given the state of the Pay TV market. Frankly, if Ergen can’t get it announced this year, it might never happen.” ■

After a two-year run where stocks in the sector nearly tripled, riding a wave of unprecedented broadband growth, cable shares wiped out in 2021 amid fears that the slowdown in high-speed internet customer growth will be worse than even the most pessimistic analysts expect.   

Only one cable distribution stock appreciated during 2021 — WideOpenWest — and that was mainly due to its M&A activity. WOW shares nearly doubled to $20.87 on Dec. 21 from $10.67 on Dec. 31, 2020, fueled by its decision to sell off systems in two separate deals with Atlantic Broadband and Astound Broadband that brought in a combined $1.8 billion. While those deals and some private transactions helped to boost overall valuations for the sector, it had little effect on other publicly traded stocks, which have been rocked by concern that the inevitable slowdown in broadband growth would be worse than originally expected

Cable companies saw unprecedented broadband growth in 2020, fueled by the pandemic and stay-at-home orders that forced Americans to work, play and go to school from home. But in 2021, as students began to return to class and workers to their offices, that growth began to slow. In Q3, broadband subscriber additions were  well below expectations and fueled concerns that Q4 growth could be even weaker.

That all had an effect on cable distribution stocks, which despite WOW’s dizzying rise, fell a collective 17.5% in 2021. Altice USA was the biggest decliner, dropping 52.1% for the year after reporting a loss of broadband customers in Q3 and hinting that Q4 could be negative as well. Altice was followed by Cable One, which saw its stock drop 22.2% in 2021 after five years of double-digit increases. Rounding out the sector was Comcast, down 5.6% for the year and Charter Communications, down 2.6%. 

Media Struggling Overall

While doom and gloom has enveloped the cable business, no sector in the media business was spared. Telco and satellite stocks dropped nearly 8% for the year despite speculation that AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Communications would begin to chip away at cable’s broadband lead with increased investment in fiber networks. Dish Network, which pushed the launch of its first wireless market to early 2022, fared the best, dipping less than 1% for the year to $32.04 per share from $32.34 each on December 31, 2020.

Programming stocks, which were boosted earlier in the year by direct-to-consumer offerings, felt the pain later in the year as their subscriber rolls began to soften. Like distributors, programmers saw only one stock rise for the year -- Fox Corp., which increased about 28% from $28.77 per share to $36.90 each. But that still wasn’t enough to offset declines at other programmers, with the sector down about 11.6% for the year.    

MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett has called the concern that the telcos’ attack on cable broadband will lead to an equally bloody cable advance on wireless, the Convergence Apocalypse. But he sees the risks posed to both sectors as asymmetric, adding that cable is in a superior position on nearly every dimension. 

In a handful of reports Moffett showed that not only does cable have better mobie virtual network operator (MVNO) economics — its margins should hold even after substantial price cuts — but its coverage is better because its wireless service can be bundled with broadband virtually everywhere.  

“By contrast, Verizon can bundle their national wireless service with fiber in only 11% of the country,” Moffett wrote. “AT&T can bundle their national wireless service with fiber in only 13% of the country. Tying a national service to a tiny wireline footprint would be a nonsensical strategy.” 

Also: Fear of, Desire For M&A Drives Cable Stocks in Q2 

Moffett isn’t suggesting that the broadband slowdown won’t happen. He just believes it won't be as bad as some are predicting. 

“The forces arguing for a slowdown aren’t going away, and any serious forecast has to assume steady deceleration,” Moffett wrote. “But it is possible to be too pessimistic.”

Ready for the Downturn

He noted that cable operators have been preparing for the slowdown for years, and they are steadily expanding their networks through edge-outs and other means to increase the number of homes they can market for service. 

For example, he pointed to Charter, which is growing its homes passed by about 2%, or 1 million homes per year. About 600,000 of those additional homes are via edge-outs, and Moffett estimated that assuming reasonable penetration rates, that alone could mean an additional 500,000 net additions per year.    

“And that’s before their footprint expansion from RDOF [the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund], the rural subsidy program that will add yet another million homes passed to their footprint over the next five years,” Moffett wrote. 

Barclays Group media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wasn’t so sure. In a Dec. 20 note to clients, Venkateshwar wrote that he sees telcos having a broadband advantage over cable next year. He estimated that Comcast and Charter, the two largest cable companies in the country, could each add less than 1 million broadband customers each in 2022, their lowest growth levels ever.

While telcos could account for the bulk of 2022 broadband growth with a combination of fixed wireline and fixed wireless offerings, Venkateshwar noted that if the cable-telco broadband gap widens in 2022, cable operators are not likely to take that switch sitting down and could step up pricing discounts to attract share.

Also: Rutledge Says Cable Mobile Service Pricing Could Drop Further 

That could be risky, though, because Venkateshwar noted that the marginal costs for delivering fixed wireless is a lot lower for telcos.

“Therefore, telecom companies will be more incentivized to price fixed broadband at attractive levels instead of re-pricing their wireless back books to compete with cable,” Venkateshwar wrote. “We also believe cable companies have fewer degrees of freedom on wireless because of a locked-in variable cost structure which limits their ability to respond to handset promotions from wireless operators.”

But he added that might depend on the size of the volume based wholesale pricing stepdown embedded in the cable companies’ MVNO agreements. Both Charter and Comcast recently restructured those agreements with Verizon. 

“If cable companies have more operating leverage than usual MVNO deals because of their recent wholesale deal modification with Verizon, then the competitive backdrop for both wireless and wireline broadband could get equally bad,” Venkateshwar wrote.

Also: Metaverse or Meh-taverse?

On the technology side, the so-called FAANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google — did well, with the sector up a collective 16.8%. Apple had the largest percentage gain (31.2%), followed by Facebook (now Meta), up 22.3%; Netflix (11.9%) and Amazon (4.6%). ■ 

The term “metaverse” has become a thing again because Mark Zuckerberg has decided to wholeheartedly embrace the idea of a 3D, interactive world where users can work, play and be entertained, even changing Facebook’s holding company name to Meta. 

So while the social media mavens continue to tout how the cool kids will use whatever Silicon Valley can throw at them to interact with content, create creepy little avatars of themselves while they talk to and text their friends’ equally creepy-looking avatars and play games and whatnot using advanced augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology, just remember that this is really nothing new. 

It’s being touted as a revolution but for me, a person definitely way outside the target audience for these products, we’ve been down this road before. Interacting with content is nothing new for media watchers — we’ve been talking about it ever since Time Warner Cable launched the Full Service Network back in the 1990s. And with streaming and ultra high-speed broadband outpacing more traditional forms of entertainment consumption, media types have long prepared for this inevitable evolution.  

But the media business has never met a buzzword that it couldn’t beat to death and for the moment, “metaverse” appears to fit that bill. According to Bernstein Research, “metaverse” mentions on public company conference calls rose from just one in Q2 2020 to 449 in 3Q 2021.

Even actor Keanu Reeves, an owner of bitcoin and enthusiastic embracer of technology — he’s Neo, for gosh sakes — has asked for the metaverse hype to be turned down a notch, telling The Verge during the press tour for the upcoming Matrix: Resurrections movie that the term is decades old. 

Also: Meta May Not Be Betta But it Still Matters to Streaming Video’s Future  

“Can we just not have metaverse be like invented by Facebook?” Reeves told The Verge. “The concept of the metaverse is like, way older. It’s like, c’mon man.”  

Bernstein Research hosted a conference call with its clients about the metaverse on Dec. 10 (a transcript was provided on Dec. 16) and for software developers and hardware manufacturers it appears that momentum is going their way.

According to Bernstein, the metaverse could represent a $2 trillion annual revenue opportunity, but there is a big question regarding timing: nobody knows exactly when that opportunity will come. Still, that revenue is expected to come from multiple sources — advertising, gaming, software, mobile apps and more — and some is even being spent to some extent today.  

“Companies are already spending to build it [the metaverse] and that costs real capital dollars,” Bernstein Internet analyst Mark Schmulik said on the call. “As they build it, we're already starting to see certain companies like Meta gain traction in hardware sales and related software sales. While it's still too early to draw a line of whether that's going to be successful or not, it's certainly underway.” 

That includes cable and telecom companies, which see the metaverse as another catalyst to drive the need for higher speeds. On the Dec. 10 Bernstein call, cable and telecom analyst Peter Supino noted that he expects 80 million U.S. homes to have at least one way to purchase Gigabit symmetrical service by 2025. 

And while wireless has been capacity constrained in the past, Supino noted that about 500 megahertz of mid-band spectrum has been reallocated by the Big Three carriers (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) to 5G. 

The metaverse also is important to the cloud services business, because connecting as many machines as possible is a big priority. And that need for connectivity could be a potential boon for Dish Network, which has about 100 MHz of fallow wireless spectrum and partnership possibilities with Amazon Web Services, Azure or Google Cloud. 

“Dish is an unencumbered, high capacity link between the industrial metaverse and the cloud service providers that would like to serve and foster it,” Supino said.

But on the media and entertainment side, the benefits of the metaverse aren’t so clear.

Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger admitted he was a “card-carrying” cynic when it comes to the Metaverse, adding that with all the hype surrounding the industry’s latest buzzword, he’s feeling more than a little déjà vu.  

Also: A Deeper Look At the Netflix VR Environment 

“The reason I'm cynical is that I feel like I've seen this before in media and entertainment,” Juenger said according to the transcript. “To me, the metaverse just sounds like a new word to describe an evolution that's naturally happening anyway.”

He then went on to offer an example. Remember 3D? Not too long ago, in the wake of James Cameron’s Avatar, the most successful 3D movie ever made, all content was supposed to be 3D, movies, television, networks began springing up all over the place. In 2010, ESPN was set to launch a 3D channel, Discovery was teaming up with Sony and IMAX to launch a 24-hour linear 3D network with movies, documentaries and children's programming and electronics vendors were scrambling to introduce 3D TVs to satiate what they expected to be tremendous demand. 

I don’t have to tell you what happened, but I’ll let Juenger tell you why it did anyway. 

“A couple years go by and where is 3D, right?,” Juenger said. “It was just [that] consumers didn't like it. They didn't benefit from it. It was almost being forced upon them.”

Sound familiar?

Also: A New Reality Check for VR and AR 

Juenger went on to talk about AR, which was all the rage a few years ago, fueled by Pokémon Go, the mobile game that had young and old alike wandering into traffic to capture little AR anime figures. That was supposed to take the video game business by storm and again, it didn’t. Juenger recalled that while Pokémon Go was a massive success and its still going relatively strong, it remains the go-to example of AR’s supposed takeover of the video game business a half decade after its introduction. 

“It's funny that when we talk about AR when it relates to media, we still have to use Pokémon Go as the example, right?” Juenger said, noting that in the entertainment business, everybody copies everybody else, but so far that hasn’t happened with AR. 

“If AR is a big idea, where are the other AR video games?” Juenger said. “Why do we still have to point to Pokémon Go?”

Juenger wasn’t denying the opportunity that a new and improved metaverse presents. He just believes that the concern as to whether media and entertainment companies will take advantage of it is a bit misplaced.They already seem to be doing it. 

Also: Ripley Says Bally Sports Net DTC Offering Will Be Lean-Forward Experience 

“When it comes to entertainment, I will say the content creation will follow the technology platforms.” Juenger said. “I don't deny that there will be a big advancement in devices people use and [are] using social elements of entertainment, which incorporates elements of what we call the metaverse.”

Juenger, who also follows the video game industry, said that Roblox, the online platform that allows people to play games created by other users, already bills itself as a metaverse. The difference between Roblox games and more traditional games like Grand Theft Auto, he said, is that a user can move his Roblox avatar through different games. 

“I'm not sure you even want to take your GTA persona and move it into a different game, so maybe those will just stay separate,” Juenger said. “In terms of VR and AR games — in VR games, every major publisher makes some — but they all tell you that they just earn the minimum. And the only reason they do it is not really to make money, it's really just to stay involved and to build capabilities in case this takes off.” 

Even Disney has jumped on the metaverse bandwagon, envisioning a merger of the physical and virtual worlds in its theme park experiences, which Juenger said, although a  bit cringe-worthy, probably makes sense. 

“To me, that just sounds like an idea of a Disney video game,” Juenger said, adding that the prevailing wisdom that only huge conglomerates can afford to take advantage of metaverse opportunities may not hold true. 

Sure, the mega-media giants like Disney have all the money, technology and resources and have managed to build huge communities with their brands, but their size can make them slow to react to changes in the business. With development getting easier and faster and distribution barriers being shattered across the landscape, Juenger said some believe it is time to consider smaller, faster, more advanced startups to displace some of their older, larger competitors.    

“This is all still new enough and video games are inherently innovative,” Juenger said. “I would bet on the big IPs. But I think it's an evolution, not a revolution. Video game manufacturers — they've gone through a lot of change already. I think this is just another one.” 

Other analysts have delved into the metaverse conversation, with Evercore ISI Internet analyst Mark Mahaney issuing a 33-page report on December 10 that highlighted the pros and cons of the technology. Pros: there is a lot of money to be made. Cons: It’s going to take a big change in consumer behavior to realize that revenue.

On the plus side, Mahaney said Meta (the former Facebook) is putting its money where its vision is, investing more than $10 billion annually in the concept, has about 3.5 billion monthly users in its family of apps that are already engaging in what is most likely the core use of the metaverse (social media); and has the majority of the VR device business through Oculus Quest. And the pandemic has shown that consumers are willing to interact more online -- Zoom went from 10 million data meeting participants in 2019 to 300 million by April 2020. Roblox has more than 47 million DAUs that average 2.6 hours per day on the platform in Q3 2021, and while VR adoption is still nascent -- about 2% of monthly users on Steam -- it is rising.

But there’s a downside too. According to Mahaney’s report, the biggest question is whether enough consumers will swap “real” reality for virtual reality or whether VR will just be another niche product. And then there is the technology part of the metaverse. Zuckerberg has said that the biggest challenge for the industry is cramming a super-computer into the frame of normal-looking eyeglasses. 

“Ultimately, we need high-fidelity graphics, low latency, with hundreds of millions of concurrent users in real-time at a relatively cheap price point,” Mahaney wrote.

That, to me, is going to be the real deciding factor in this. People have different expectations as to how the metaverse will look and feel and I will bet you that none of them has a basis in the current reality.

The technology industry is really good at driving interest and excitement about technology, but it takes time for these things to deliver what’s being promised. And now they are talking about a technology that in order to work as promised is literally going to have billions of users accessing servers and whatnot simultaneously. Just think of how annoyed you get when Netflix takes too much time to load a movie and multiply that by 1,000 or so when your virtual jaunt through the rainforest crashes into a sea of pixels. 

And then there are the social and privacy aspects. It’s probably a safe bet that to keep the cost of these products and services down, people are going to have to give up a load of personal data. Sure many are doing that already, but you’ve got to wonder how much more everyone is going to have to surrender to make a low-cost metaverse worthwhile. 

And as far as the social impact, while most people have spent a year in isolation, when they get a chance to go out and interact with actual people, they do it in droves. The news is full of stories of people, young and old, that risked going to large gatherings during the outbreak. Heck, just yesterday (December 16), AMC Theaters said that 1.1 million people went outside to an actual movie theater to watch Spiderman: No Way Home, the second largest box office day in AMC’s history  (The Avengers: Endgame was No. 1). 

So I guess what I’m saying is that for the metaverse to really be worth the hype, it has to deliver on its promises. If it doesn’t, it risks turning consumers off of the concept, or at least substantially delaying its acceptance until it resurfaces years later with another name -- my vote is for  Vitametamegaverse (“It’s So Tasty Too!”). And that’s another thing that this industry has seen before.  ■ 

A Texas court has told South Asian IPTV service ChitramTV to pay Dish Network over $31 million dollars for poaching international channels from the satellite service and delivering the video to subs over the internet.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas said ChitramTV had willfully infringed on over 207 copyrights and imposed the maximum penalty of $150,000 per for a total of $31,050,000.

Dish monitored the service and discovered in 2015 that ChitramTV had poached 207 programs from 19 international channels to which Dish had exclusive rights. Dish sent infringement notices--164 of them the court said--telling ChitramTV to stop immediately, which it did according to the court, only to resume the poaching practice a couple of years later.

Dish filed suit in March 2021.

Also: Texas Court Fines Dish-Infringing Streamer $7M

Dish will get the $31 million plus 15% interest, and ChitramTV and any resellers are permanently enjoined from airing Dish channels in the U.S. or to promote set-top boxes, subscriptions, or services that provide access to Dish's channels or works airing on those channels.

Resellers have until Friday (Nov. 16) to comply.

Dish also gets all the domains ChitramTV was using to distribute the content, or might use in the future, including Chitram.TV.

The suit was coordinated with The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP).

“We are very pleased with this legal victory as it will enable us and our members to shut down one of the most popular South Asian pirate services operating in the U.S.," said IBCAP Executive Director Chris Kuelling. "The injunctions imposed, along with the transfer of current and future domains associated with ChitramTV, will have a devastating effect on ChitramTV and any dealer selling ChitramTV," he said. "A dealer that continues to sell ChitramTV after receiving notice of the injunction will be in contempt of the Court’s order and liable for further damages. Dealers should be aware that it’s not worth risking their business by selling pirate IPTV services.” ■

Dish Network and Sinclair Broadcast Group said they reached a new multi-year carriage agreement.

The new deal keeps Sinclair’s 144 local station in 85 markets on the Dish TV satellite service. It also puts Sinclair’s Tennis Channel on Dish and on Dish’s virtual multichannel video programming distributor service, Sling TV. Sinclair’s regional sports networks remain off Dish and Sling.

The previous retransmission agreement between Dish and Sinclair ran out in mid-August, before the start of the NFL season. The stations have been available to Dish subscribers under a series of short-term extensions.

Dish is still in a blackout situation with Tegna, whose stations have been unavailable to Dish subscribers since Oct. 5. The companies have been trading charges ever since. 

"Our agreement with Dish reflects the continued importance that distributors place on local and national broadcast content,” said William Bell, Sinclair's head of distribution & network relations. “We look forward to continuing to provide Dish viewers with the high-quality and highly-desired entertainment, and timely local news that they depend on every day."     

Not included in the deal are Sinclair’s regional sports networks. Dish has been dropping expensive local sports channels, including Sinclair's. Dish has been insisting that customers that want sports have already dropped Dish in favor of distributors that offer more sports options. Some observers thought Sinclair might be able to tie the sports outlets to a retransmission agreement with Dish.

"We are pleased to have reached a multi-year agreement with Sinclair after months of negotiations," said Brian Neylon, group president, Dish TV. "Sinclair has been a good long-term partner to work with. Both sides have been committed to keeping our customers top of mind and not putting them in the middle of our negotiations. After several contract extensions, we have arrived at a fair agreement that benefits all parties, especially our customers."

ACA Connects member Barbourville Utilities is cutting the cord. The Kentucky cable operator has told its customers that it is getting out of the traditional cable business to focus on broadband.

It is not signing up any new cable customers, but will help any current customers who want to keep traditional video service through a deal with Dish Network, while pointing broadband subscribers to all the over-the-top video streaming service choices available through their broadband connections.

Cable operators large and small have made no secret of their view that the event horizon for traditional cable was not a lengthy one, witness NCTA's change to "The Internet & Television Association."

Barbourville overbuilt its traditional system with fiber-to-the home — it serves an Appalachian town of about 3,500 — so it would be ready for the next iteration of service.

“While Barbourville Utilities will no longer offer cable TV service to new customers, we are not leaving our valued customers without alternatives,” the company said on its website. “With our BLINK high-speed internet service you can easily stream your choice of subscription television services, or we can help connect you to more traditional live TV via satellite.”

The Dish deal is a promise of a two-year price guarantee, free installation, and a $100 gift card underwritten by Barbourville Utilities. Not surprisingly, it is encouraging them to stick with BLINK for their broadband.

But it also points out that subs don‘t have to have a traditional service to watch TV, thanks to streaming services including Sling TV, Hulu Plus Live TV, and YouTube TV.

For those concerned about losing access to TV stations by moving to broadband-only video, the operator points out that various streaming services deliver broadcast nets and local stations, and Netflix, Paramount Plus and Amazon Prime Video, for example, have on-demand TV shows.

Barbourville Utilities is not making any recommendations saying customers should do their own streaming service research, but its chart of services for comparison shopping does call YouTube TV “one of the best services for overall live streaming” and said Fubo TV is ”great for sports.“

Dish Network responded to Tegna’s cross-complaint — and its response to Dish’s earlier legal action — as “meritless and riddled with mischaracterizations and falsehoods.”

Satellite-TV provider Dish and Tegna are locked in a retransmission consent battle that has left millions of Dish subscribers without access to the programming on Tegna’s stations since Oct. 6.

Dish filed a suit charging that Tegna was violating the Federal Communications Commission’s “good faith” rules on Oct. 18. Tegna responded Friday and filed its own suit.

In a statement, Dish claims that Tegna failed to include key information about its own conduct. It said Tegna chose not to provide a response to Dish’s economic proposal for nearly six weeks.

“When Tegna did respond, it proposed rates that were significantly out of line with competitive marketplace considerations,” Dish said.

“We are disappointed that Tegna continues to turn its back on its public interest obligations and refuses to engage in good faith retransmission consent negotiations with Dish. Tegna’s conduct only serves to harm consumers,” Dish said.

In its statement, Dish said it will respond to Tegna’s answer and cross-complaint at the FCC in the coming weeks.

Dish is losing subscribers because of the retransmission dispute that has blacked out Tegna stations, Dish co-founder and chairman Charlie Ergen said.

Referring to the Tegna stations on Dish’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday, Ergen said, “they’re not up and we are losing some customers, but not as dramatic as it might have been in the past.”

Also: Tegna Responds to Dish and Files Own Suit Charging False Claims

Ergen said that retransmission fees continue to go up as broadcast network viewing erodes.

“We've seen viewership decline 15 years in a row on the networks and retrans go up by 1,000%. That's not sustainable,” he said. “We look at the math and we know we'll lose customers, so we know we'll lose Tegna customers.”

Ergen predicted that if viewing and retransmission fee trends continue it will kill off the networks. “The end result of this is networks -- if you fast forward 10 [years] ... -- I don't know that networks exist, maybe for local news, because they're pricing themselves out of the market.”

Retransmission is mostly a ticket that lets viewers watch their local NFL teams, Ergen said. 

“Once people find a way to get football next year, that's going to be a permanent loss of viewers for Tegna,” Ergen said. “And of course, people also can go get it from the networks. They can get Peacock from NBC directly. And maybe Tegna gets revenue from that, maybe they get more revenue than they do from us, and maybe that makes sense for them.”

Ergen questioned why the networks were looking to drive viewers toward streaming services. And he noted that that is putting station owners in a difficult spot. “I'm somewhat empathetic to their plight because they don't have a real place to go, absent some fundamental changes.”

And at some point, retransmission fees will have to go down, rather than up, he contended.

“I think the moves in retrans are down, not up. And I don't know what that does to valuations, but I saw Gray publicly said 50% of their revenues are retrans. And I think that's going to come under pressure,” he said.

Dish is also in a retransmission dispute with Sinclair, but Sinclair’s stations have remained on Dish via a series of short-term extensions.

“Sinclair is bigger than Tegna  and we've had a long-term relationship there. And that -- there's more conversation around that, than there is, and they're bigger and would probably have a little bit more clout and scale in the marketplace.”

Tegna, locked in a retransmission-consent battle with Dish Network that has blacked out its stations since Oct. 6, has responded to a suit by the satellite TV provider and filed its own complaint.

Also Read: Dish Is Losing Subs Because Of Tegna Blackout, Charlie Ergen Says 

The broadcast called Dish’s bad-faith charges baseless and alleges that Dish is the one failing to comply with the Federal Communications Commission’s good-faith retrans rules by misrepresenting the negotiations.

Dish responded to the blackout by filing a complaint charging that Tegna was negotiation in bad faith.

“As we speak, millions of Dish customers are being deprived of valued local and national news, weather coverage, NFL and college football and top-rated entertainment shows. Instead of working to restore our programming, Dish is abusing the FCC’s processes and, more importantly, wasting their customers’ time with baseless complaints,” Tegna said in a statement. 

“Our response and cross-complaint show that it is Dish which has acted in bad faith, not only by obstructing negotiations over many months but also through the distortions it has presented to the public and the FCC,” Tegna said. “Unfortunately, Dish’s behavior is consistent with its track record of obstructive tactics. Last year alone, Dish deprived its customers of more than 230 different channels due to disputes like this one. In addition, the company has a long history of abusing the process by bringing business disputes to regulators and courts.

Tegna urged Dish to negotiate seriously and encouraged Dish subscribers to let the satellite provider know they want the programming Tegna’s stations provide.

Dish Network reported that it lost pay TV 13,000 subscribers in the third quarter, but that profits increased.

The company finished the quarter with 10.98 million pay TV subscribers, down from 10.99 million at the end of the second quarter. It had 8.42 million Dish TV subs, down from 8.55 million, but it grew its streaming Sling TV subscribers to 2.56 million, up from 2.44 million.

A year ago, during the pandemic. Dish reported an increase of 116,000 subscribers. At the end of the third quarter of 2020, Dish had 11.42 million pay TV subscribers. It had 8.96 million Dish TV subscribers and 2.46 million Sling subscribers.

Dish last month announced a $5 a month price increase across most of its linear satellite TV tiers. 

Tegna, which has stations in 53 markets, has been blacked out on Dish since October. Dish is also airing Sinclair’s stations on a series of short-term extensions, so an even larger blackout is possible. 

Net income was $557 million, or 88 cents a share, up 10% from $505 million, or 86 cents a share a year ago.

Revenue fell to $4.34 billion from $4.53 billion a year ago.

Dish said it had lost 121,000 retail wireless subscribers to finish the quarter with 8.77 million subs.

Family Entertainment Television said it launched a new network, Family Movie Classics on Dish Network, reaching nearly 9 million subscribers.

The channel features classic movies appropriate to be enjoyed by the whole family. 

“This is a very proud day in our company’s history,” said president and CEO Drew Sumrall. “We continually strive to bring good, wholesome entertainment to American families. FMC is a major step toward achieving that goal, and with Dish TV as a launch partner, the future is very bright for this network.”

Family Entertainment Television also producers FETV. FETV features classic and inspirational programming, including TV series from the 1950s through the 1990s like Perry Mason, Matlock, Barney Miller and Bewitched.

In July, FETV added carriage on Frndly TV, the low-priced streaming service aimed at family-minded viewers.  

Dish Network said it filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission charging that Tegna is not negotiating a new retransmission deal in good faith.

Tegna stations have been blacked out to Dish‘s satellite TV subscribers since Oct. 7. 

Tegna called the complaint "utterly baseless and without merit.

Dish claims that Tegna has been stonewalling negotiations and has made unreasonable and inconsistent demands.

“Tegna turned its back on its public-interest obligation and failed to engage in good faith retransmission consent negotiations with Dish,” said Andy LeCuyer, Dish senior VP of programming. “Tegna’s demands were both unreasonable and inconsistent. This behavior negatively impacts Dish subscribers, and we expect Tegna’s bad behavior to only get worse as the programmer looks to sell its stations to the highest bidder. As a result, we have filed a formal complaint with the FCC to address Tegna’s blatant disregard of the Commission’s rules.”

Last month, Tegna said it received bids to buy the company and is reviewing the proposals. 

In its complaint, Dish said that Tegna’s appeared to demand that Dish pay for all subscribers in a local market whether they purchase local programming from Dish or not. It also appeared to demand that Dish pay for viewers who no longer subscribe to the satellite TV platform. 

Tegna’s demands would have totaled nearly $1 billion in fees, the Dish filing said.

In a statement, Tegna said it welcomes a chance for the FCC to review Dish's conduct during the negotiations.

"Perhaps a close examination of DISH’s conduct will cause them to come to the table to negotiate free from their consistently unproductive tactics and public misrepresentations," Tegna said.

Tegna said it made a comprehensive proposal to Dish months ago. It updated the proposal "multiple times," including a "reduction in rates." Tegna said Dish has refused to counter and has not proposed rates in more than three weeks.

Tegna noted that Dish has a history of being blacked out when retransmission contracts come to an end.

"The unfortunate reality is that Dish dropped more than 230 channels last year alone and is now repeating that pattern by refusing to reach an agreement with Tegna, depriving its customers nationwide of some of the most valued programming on TV," Tegna said. "Rather than engage in transparent PR stunts, DISH should return to the negotiating table in a serious fashion and get a deal done before their subscribers are forced to endure yet another week without their favorite shows, valued local news, as well as marquee college football and NFL matchups.”  

Historically complaints citing failure to negotiate in good faith have been nonstarters. Though they were not unusual as negotiating parties jockeyed for leverage, up until this year none had succeeded.

Such complaints have generally been dismissed for failing to show the negotiations were not in good faith, or dropped after the parties involved reach an agreement and publicly bury the hatchet, at least for the time being. But the FCC has injected new life into the tactic by actually taking action.

Back in July, the FCC upheld a $10 million retransmission fine against Sinclair-managed stations for violating the good faith negotiation requirement.  All the groups were represented by consultant Duane Lammers of Max Retrans.

DirecTV had alleged that the broadcaster unreasonably delayed retrans negotiations, including failing to respond to AT&T proposals, and the FCC agreed.

The FCC fined each station individually, saying "the harm to viewers is multiplied with each station that goes dark, regardless of the number of corporate parents involved in a carriage dispute, underscoring the importance of our focus on individual stations."

The American Television Alliance, whose members comprise cable and satellite operators that support retransmission consent reforms including the definition of good faith bargaining, put itself squarely behind DISH and its complaint.

“Mammoth broadcast conglomerates like TEGNA must be held accountable as they weaponize blackouts and harm consumers time and again," said ATVA spokesperson Jessica Kendust. "We hope the FCC will recognize this latest incident and put a stop to these egregious tactics in the future.”

John Eggerton contributed to this story.

Giant station owner Tegna and satellite TV provider Dish Network said they are far apart in negotiations as their current retransmission consent agreement has run out with an extension set to expire at 9 p.m. Wednesday. 

Also Read: Tegna Stations Blacked Out to Dish TV Subscribers

Tegna said Dish is refusing to reach a fair agreement to continue carriage. The broadcaster said it began notifying viewers of an impending blackout Tuesday after giving the satellite TV provider an extension beyond the original date their agreement expired to allow talks to continue. 

Also Read: AT&T SportsNet and Root Sports Removed From Dish Network

“We are committed to reaching a fair, market-based agreement with Dish based on the competitive terms we’ve used to reach deals with numerous other providers that reflect the current market,” Tegna said in a statement. “Thus far, Dish has refused to agree to such terms, which is why we have begun informing Dish customers that they may lose access to their local Tegna station and our valuable programming. We hope that Dish is willing to negotiate a market-based deal before tomorrow night’s deadline, and doesn’t take away their customers’ local news, weather, sports and network programs.”

Dish blamed the growth in the size of retransmission fee payments, which in the case of a large station owner like Tegna could come close to $1 billion. 

“Businesses should have the opportunity to be profitable, but there's a big difference between running a profitable business and taking blatant advantage of consumers,” said Brian Neylon, group president, Dish TV. “Tegna is demanding an unreasonable fee increase — an increase the programmer knows will directly impact its viewers.”

Dish agreement with Tegna could impact subscribers’ access to local ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, The CW and MyNetwork TV stations across 52 U.S. cities.

The FCC has told a D.C. Federal Appeals Court that Dish retains de facto control of two wireless companies, Northstar Wireless, LLC (Northstar) and SNR Wireless LicenseCo (SNR), that claimed $3.3 billion in bidding credits in the FCC's AWS-3 spectrum auction.

That came in its response to a challenge by the wireless companies to its decision, actually "decisions" plural, that those companies did not merit the credits because they were controlled by Dish, which put up the $13.3 billion in winning spectrum bids.

The FCC said the court should uphold its decision and deny the petitions to review those decisions.

As to the process, the FCC told the court that it had given those companies a chance to cure their problems, which they didn't, and via procedures consistent with FCC precedent.

As to the challenge to its conclusion that Dish still controlled them, the FCC said that Dish's authority to veto the leasing of the spectrum licenses demonstrated it still had de facto control.

It also told the court it had given the companies fair warning their revisions did not cure Dish's de facto control.

Also Read: Dish Makes Case for AWS-3 Bids

The two companies teamed with Dish to acquire $10 billion worth of spectrum licenses in the AWS-3 auction. But the FCC subsequently concluded that Dish's majority financial interest in the companies were controlling interests that should be attributable to Dish, which meant the companies were ineligible for the $1.9 billion (Northstar) and $1.4 billion (SNR Wireless) bidding credits they had applied for.

That federal court in August 2017 upheld the finding that Dish exercised de facto control, but also held that the FCC, under then chair Tom Wheeler, failed to notify the companies that if the FCC found they did not qualify for the credits, worth billions of dollars, the FCC would not give them a chance to cure that problem and instructed the FCC to correct.

The FCC under new management--Chairman Ajit Pai--and in response to the court remand, in January told the companies to renegotiate with Dish and other parties and file the necessary documents to show they now qualify for the credit. They did, but the FCC again concluded they were still controlled by Dish.

Sinclair Broadcast Group and Dish have agreed to a short-term extension of their carriage agreement hours before it was set to expire.

“We have agreed to a short-term extension with Dish to continue conversations. We will continue to update our viewers as this develops. Sinclair stands willing to continue to negotiate in good faith and to enter into a longer extension to allow for the continued carriage of our channels to Dish subscribers,” said David Gibber, senior VP and general counsel at Sinclair.

If Sinclair and Dish fail to reach a retransmission agreement, Dish subscribers will lose access to 108 broadcast stations via their satellite service. They will also lose the Tennis Channel, which is owned by Sinclair.

Dish has about 3.5 million subscribers in Sinclair markets.

The negotiations also may involve the Bally Sports regional sports networks owned by Sinclair. Dish stopped carrying the RSNs in 2019, before they were acquired by Sinclair from Disney , which got them when it bought 21st Century Fox and the new retransmission negotiations could give Sinclair an opportunity to restore their carriage.

 Last week, it appeared unlikely a deal would be reached.

During Dish Network’s second-quarter earnings call, chairman Charlie Ergen said he was disappointed that Sinclair had decided to negotiate in the press. 

The broadcaster made a statement that indicated that it was unlikely a deal could be reached.

“I’m disappointed that they put a press release out that they expect the networks to come down. I think we have until Aug. 16,” Ergen said on the conference call. “Many negotiations come down to the wire, so we’re still going to bargain in good faith.”

Ergen was asked if Sinclair was seeking to include carriage of the RSNs in the retransmission negotiations. He wouldn’t say what Sinclair was seeking, but he noted that because the RSN’s have been unavailable to Dish subscribers for so long, it’s unlikely that any of them want to watch--or pay--for them. 

Whatever you think about Sinclair Broadcast Group's planned direct-to-consumer offering, slated for next year, one thing is certain: in the near term it really doesn’t mean that much. A more pressing deal, and one that may have even broader implications to the broadcast giant, could be answered in the next few weeks -- its carriage deals with No. 2 satellite TV service provider Dish Network.

Sinclair's retransmission consent agreement with Dish expires on Aug. 15, and many have expected that carriage of the RSNs will become a big part of that negotiation. Dish represents about 8 million subscribers for Sinclair, and the company has said in Securities and Exchange Commission filings that it is counting on the revenue from that Dish deal to keep its engines humming.

“The Dish deal has become overly important,” sports consultant Lee Berke, president and CEO of LHB Entertainment & Sports, said. “There is no question it is an issue, but now everybody is focused on it.”

The jury is still out as to just what Sinclair is willing to do to ensure that carriage. Some have speculated that the broadcaster could allow Dish to place the RSNs on tiers -- long a bone of contention between programmers and distributors -- and/or offer the satellite TV giant an equity piece of its DTC offering. So far, neither side is saying anything officially about the talks. 

Also Read: Sinclair’s Streaming RSNs and Warner’s CNN Plus May Be Pay TV’s Biggest Disruptors

Dish has pushed for tiering sports networks before -- it was one of its reasons for dropping the Sinclair RSNs in 2019.

In an interview in 2019, Dish executive VP Andy LeCuyer didn’t say the “T-word,” but it was pretty clear what the company wanted. 

“We think the RSN content should be sort of like a ticket to the ballpark. Fans who love and want that content should be the ones who pay for it, not forcing the vast majority of other subscribers to subsidize it, ” LeCuyer said in that 2019 interview. 

Dish declined to comment on the current negotiations with Sinclair, but perhaps the company will have more to say when it releases its Q2 results on Aug. 9.

Now, with the negotiating ball clearly in their court and the pressure to make a deal squarely on Sinclair, it could be Dish’s best chance ever to make that happen.  

And though Dish chairman Charlie Ergen has been critical of Sinclair’s sports networks in the past, Dish could be open to a deal, especially after it ended a three-year blackout of premium channel HBO on July 29. Dish let HBO go dark on Oct. 31, 2018 claiming high prices and retaliation by HBO parent AT&T over Dish’s objection to its merger with Time Warner Inc. When the dispute was settled, Dish subscribers were allowed to purchase HBO’s streaming service HBO Max at a 20% discount ($12 per month for one year) and get sister premium channel Cinemax, for $10 per month. 

Sinclair apparently baked in the Dish deal in a proposal to its bondholders to restructure about $8 billion in debt at its Diamond Sports Group unit, the vehicle that houses its RSNs. In an 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, Diamond Sports estimated its revenue would be between $3.07 billion and $3.249 billion in 2021, and analysts have estimated that about $400 million of that would come from Dish. 

According to the 8-K, Sinclair said the talks with bondholders were ongoing, but the companies were “unable to reach a definitive agreement at the time.”  Some analysts took that to mean bondholders wanted to see how the Dish talks panned out before committing to a deal, which according to some reports included a proposal to get bondholders to invest an additional $300 million to $500 million in Diamond Sports.

On its conference call to discuss Q2 results on Aug, 4, Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley chafed when an analyst characterized the proposed restructuring as “unsuccessful,” adding that he saw it as more of a move “towards a deal that is amenable to both sides.”  

He added that Sinclair didn’t want to do just any agreement, but wants the right agreement. Just what that is, he didn’t say.   

To be fair, Ripley is really in a difficult place. He can’t say anything about ongoing talks with bondholders or distributors because of non-disclosure agreements and as a result, investors and onlookers assume the worst. Only time will tell the true story, but unfortunately time is running out. 

Sinclair stock has been battered over the past two years, rising as much as 46% to $61.81 per share in the days after it said in May 2019 that it would buy the Disney RSNs. The stock has been on a downward slope practically ever since, closing at $31 each on Aug. 6, down about 1% for the year and priced at about half what it was in May 2019. 

Ripley was frustrated about the stock performance, devoting a good portion of his opening statements on the conference call to what he said was a “significantly undervalued” stock.

During the presentation he went through a sum-of-the-parts valuation of Sinclair, pointing out its warrants for Bally stock -- part of its deal to sell branding rights to the RSNs in 2020 -- that are worth about $600 million at current prices and would cost Sinclair about $60 million to execute; a $1.2 billion tax shelter benefit that also came out of the RSN buy; the $1.7 billion  value of its licensed broadcast spectrum; and finally, $200 million in non core businesses and equity stakes in companies like antenna maker Dielectric and 5G solutions provider Saankhya Labs. And that’s not even including the value of its core TV broadcast and cable networks businesses. 

“When you put even a conservative valuation on our 185 TV stations, Tennis Channel, stadium, news on STIRR and RSNs and account for the net debt of Sinclair, you will get a per share value that is more than double the current level of where our stock is trading today,” Ripley said.

But there are a lot of factors to considering share prices, and right now Sinclair is in the middle of a transition. In a research note, Wells Fargo Securities media analyst Steven Cahall noted that Sinclair's investor base has shifted from broadcast-centric to a broadcast/media/gaming hybrid, which has caused some confusion. . 

“Investors are recalibrating, and we think, not sure quite what to do with the new Sinclair,” Cahall said in a research note. “Things have not gone well for the RSNs, leaving no equity value, consuming management resources (e.g., potential restructuring, loss of sports during coronavirus) and non-stop estimate revision risk. We also think the RSNs can drag TV retrans as SBGI supports the whole portfolio in future deals.”

So, in other words, all eyes are on the Dish deal.    

At the moment, Dish appears to be in the best negotiating position. The old threat that keeping the channels off will lead to subscriber losses means little because any such declines have already happened. Dish has little to lose by not carrying the RSNs, and therefore could force some concessions in negotiations that Sinclair might otherwise reject. Some believe that Dish could be allowed to put the RSNs on a separate tier as well as receive a small ownership interest in the DTC offering.

Allowing RSNs on a tier could affect future negotiations with other distributors, but some observers believe that Dish is enough of an outlier that Sinclair will be able to keep its other deals intact. 

“I don’t think you can lump all of the RSNs together and say this is a bellwether,” said one sports exec who asked not to be named, adding that while tiering isn’t optimal, he’s more worried about allowing distributors to cherry pick which RSNs they want to carry. But he also conceded that shifting to a tier-model would shave linear carriage at least in half. 

The rest of the RSN business is somewhat insulated in its ownership. Comcast and AT&T own the NBC Sports RSNs and Root Sports RSNs respectively, so if they were going to get placed on a tier, many believe it would have happened already. Others like MSG, SNY and YES Network are in major markets where tiering may not have that huge an impact.   

“Sinclair is going to do whatever it has to do to get this deal done,” the sports exec said. “They’re going to be as creative as they can get. If they have to shave off certain RSNs, if they’ve got to tier, they're going to do whatever they can.”

Dish Network said that it has made a new agreement with AT&T’s WarnerMedia that finally gives Dish TV subscribers access to HBO Max, as well as HBO and Cinemax.

HBO has been off Dish since November 2018. 

Under the deal, Dish customers can get HBO Max at a discounted price for up to 12 months, paying $12 per month for HBO Max’s Ad Free version, instead of the standard $14.99 month price. Additionally, Dish TV customers will get six live channels, including HBO, HBO Family and HBO Signature, as well as access to thousands of movies and shows on demand.

Dish customers can also get a 10-day free preview of HBO and Cinemax as part of the deal. If they decide to subscribe to Cinemax, it will cost $10 per month.

Also Read: Domestic HBO Max and HBO Subscribers Hit 47 Million

“Our number one priority at Dish is and always has been to provide our customers the best entertainment experience,” said Brian Neylon, group president, Dish TV. “Our customers now have greater choice in the content they can access. HBO Max and Cinemax offer iconic, beloved and acclaimed content that our customers will enjoy.”

HBO disappeared from Dish as AT&T, owner of rival satellite service DirecTV, was acquiring Warner Media. At the time Dish accused AT&T of looking to keep its content from competitors.

This year AT&T has made deals to spin off both DirecTV and its WarnerMedia unit.

The deal provides new subscriber opportunities for HBO services with Dish customers. AT&T already is coming off adding 2.8 million domestic HBO Max and HBO subscribers in the second quarter, raising its total to 47 million domestically--up 10.7 million year over year--and 67.5 million globally. AT&T now says it expects to have 70 million to 73 million global HBO Max and HBO subscribers by the end of the year. 

Dish has about 8.7 million subscribers in the U.S., even after subtracting 230,000 in the first quarter. The new deal does not include Sling TV, Dish’s OTT extension.

“When we launched HBO Max, we set out to make it available to customers everywhere they chose to access premium content, and today’s launch with Dish is a key addition to our distribution strategy for the platform,” said Scott Miller, executive VP of business & legal affairs for WarnerMedia. “We’re excited that Dish customers can now access all that HBO Max – as well as our premium linear networks –have to offer.”

While on the surface, Dish Network's new mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with AT&T looks like many other similar agreements of the past few years, at least one analyst thinks the transaction is a game changer for the satellite TV company.

In a note to clients Monday, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett noted that the AT&T deal will give Dish the ability to become a Mobile Network Operator/MVNO "indefinitely," potentially letting it off the hook for fulfilling its federally mandated requirements to provide wireless service to the rest of the country after 2023.

"The issue here is duration," Moffett wrote.

Dish has been laying the groundwork for its wireless service for years using its own spectrum and some from other sources -- in 2019 it agreed to buy wireless spectrum and the Boost Mobile prepaid business from T-Mobile for $5 billion -- for what it claims will be a state-of-the-art 5G service based on ORAN technology. The company said its first market will go live in Las Vegas in the third quarter. 

Although it already has an MVNO agreement with T-Mobile, part of the larger deal where Dish acquired about $3.6 billion in spectrum licenses and the Boost Mobile prepaid wireless business for $1.4 billion from the carrier, that resale agreement was set to expire in 2027. In addition, T-Mobile plans to shutter its 3G CDMA wireless business on Jan. 1, a move that Dish, which relies on that network for Boost Mobile, has said would be a financial hardship. 

According to the latest agreement, AT&T will make its network available to Dish for 10 years, with a two-year transition period, pushing the expiration date to 2033. In a research note, MoffettNathanson media analyst Craig Moffett wrote that is a key part of the deal, because until now it was becoming increasingly doubtful that Dish would be able to meet federally imposed deadlines on its wireless buildout. 

Dish is under the gun to make its network available to about 70% of the country by the end of 2025, but Moffett noted that was never really a concern.

“After all, the first 70% of the population lives on just 2.9% or so of the U.S. by landmass,” Moffett noted. “ It has always been what would come after that that mattered.”

Moffett wrote that table stakes for wireless coverage in the U.S. is about 95% of the country.

“Without an MVNO agreement to fall back on, Dish would have to build that out themselves by 2027, when the T-Mobile deal was slated to expire… and the next 25% of the country occupies nearly ten times the landmass of the first 70%,” Moffett wrote.

Moffett added that even if reaching 70% of the population with its network won’t be that hard, it depends on the definition of coverage -- does it  mean merely enough to meet minimum Federal Communications Commission requirements, or service that is sufficient enough to satisfy customers? 

“The latter definition of coverage is vastly more demanding than the first; it means fill-in facilities in every airport, stadium, convention center, and congested downtown area, and every dead spot along every highway,” Moffett wrote. “Under the T-Mobile agreement, Dish had until 2025 to satisfy the FCC, but only two more years afterwards to satisfy the much more exacting demands of customers. That was always the real challenge.”

While AT&T will reportedly receive $5 billion for its trouble, Moffett believes it has sacrificed its future competitive position for short-term wholesale revenue. Because the Dish deal is similar to the MVNO agreements Comcast and Charter have struck with Verizon, Dish will  be able to build out its own facilities in dense areas, which have a low cost and high return, and leave the low density areas, with higher costs and lower returns, to AT&T

“We can’t stress enough what a windfall this is for Dish.  And what a terrible decision it is for AT&T,” Moffett wrote, likening the deal to Orange’s 2016 decision to strike an attractive MVNO deal with MasMovil in Spain. “Today, five years later, MasMovil has taken double-digit market share, and Orange is shrinking by more than 10% annually.”

Moffett added that the AT&T deal doesn’t solve Dish’s CDMA problem because AT&T has never had a CDMA network. But that just proves the real impetus for the deal was in its duration. 

Not every analyst shares Moffett’s view.

In a research note Monday, JP Morgan media analyst Phil Cusick said that the general consensus among telecom execs is that they want to be the provider of choice when an MVNO moves into the market. Whether AT&T struck a deal with Dish or not, it wouldn’t change that situation. 

“...the negative to the industry came when Dish bought spectrum over the last 10 years, or when it agreed to replace Sprint, not today,” Cusick wrote.

Cusick, who downgraded Dish to “underweight” in June,  also wasn’t convinced the deal was that big a windfall for Dish.

“We don’t see this as a huge change for Dish’s prospects, but rather that getting a rural roaming deal and longer-term MVNO are each pieces of the puzzle that Dish needed in building a network over time,” Cusick wrote. “It is interesting that Dish shares were off as much as Verizon shares Monday, likely indicating that there was still some hope of Dish selling assets rather than building a network.” 

Dish shares were down about 1% (41 cents) on July 19 to $39.04 each. The stock closed at $40.87, up 4.7% on July 20.

Verizon shares were down 1.1% (62 cents) on July 19 to $55.84 per share. The stock closed at $55.62, down 0.4% (22 cents) on July 20.  

Some have speculated that the deal really is a precursor for a future combination with AT&T’s DirecTV satellite TV business. Moffett said that is probably unlikely, but in the end won’t matter that much, adding that addressing the 2027 expiration was more important than ensuring the future of the declining satellite business. 

Barclays Research analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote that there could be several reasons behind doing the deal for AT&T -- one he said, was to limit Dish’s capacity to invest in building out its network by spending big on the MVNO. 

“Strategically, the move is also interesting given that the expectation among some investors was likely the opposite i.e. that Dish would be a scaled MVNO service provider to others rather than being an MVNO user itself for the next decade,” Venkateshwar wrote. For AT&T, he said the additional money from the agreement will help provide another cash flow source to get to its goal of $20 billion in free cash flow after its WarnerMedia deal. 

But Moffett again pointed out that in giving Dish the breathing room it needs to meet its federal requirements and a network deal that virtually allows it to pick and choose where it can spend the most for the largest return, AT&T has basically breathed new life, wittingly or unwittingly, into Dish. 

“Again, the big takeaway here is that AT&T has all but assured Dish’s survival, and as a much more disruptive and dangerous competitor than would otherwise have been the case,” Moffett wrote. “AT&T has been signaling recently that they want more wholesale business when they can get it, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. They clearly decided that the short term gain of additional wholesale revenue was worth that risk. But they’d be well advised to be careful what they wish for. We see their decision to extend this deal to Dish as a catastrophically bad one. Dish and its investors should thank their lucky stars for AT&T’s strategic blunder here.”

Dish Network and AT&T, rivals in the satellite TV business, signed an agreement making AT&T the primary network service partner for Dish mobile phone customers.

Customers of Dish’s Boost Mobile, Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless brands will access coverage and connectivity on AT&T’s wireless network.

Also Read: DirecTV Spin-off Gets FCC Approval

Financial terms were not disclosed.

AT&T is in the process of spinning off both its DirecTV satellite unit and its WarnerMedia TV and movie company in order to focus on being a phone company.

The deal also covers 5G service, particularly in rural areas where Dish provides satellite-TV services. AT&T is providing transport and roaming services as part fo the agreement to support Dish’s 5G network.

Dish said it was committed to providing competition in the wireless business and will continue to build out its OpenRAN-based 5G Network, which it claims will reach 70% of the country by 2023.

"Teaming with AT&T on this long-term partnership will allow us to better compete in the retail wireless market and quickly respond to changes in our customers' evolving connectivity needs as we build our own first-of-its kind 5G network," said John Swieringa, Dish chief operating officer and group president of Retail Wireless. "The agreement provides enhanced coverage and service for our Boost, Ting and Republic customers, giving them access to the best connectivity on the market today via voice, messaging, data and nationwide roaming on AT&T's vast network, as well as Dish's 5G network." 

AT&T has invested $140 billion on its wireless and wireline networks between 2016 and the first quarter of 2021. 

The agreement allows AT&T the opportunity to use a portion of Dish's spectrum in various markets to help support Dish customers on AT&T's network.

"Teaming with Dish on this agreement is not only a testament to the strength of our network, but it further validates the investments we've made in our fiber and wireless infrastructure," said Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO, AT&T Consumer. "We welcome Dish wireless and its customers to the nation's largest and best wireless network for all of their streaming, data and roaming needs." 

Jukin Media has made a deal with Dish’s Sling TV streaming service to add two of Jukin’s channels to its lineup.

FailArmy and The Pet Collective will be available full time on Sling TV. Sling TV finished the first quarter with 2.37 million subscribers, down 100,000.

Also Read: Jukin Streaming Weather Network for Young Viewers

“Our Streaming TV channels are growing at an incredible rate, and partnering with a premier platform like Sling TV to expand our distribution even further and reach millions of additional homes is extremely exciting,” said Jill Goldfarb, senior VP of streaming TV at Jukin Media.

FailArmy features funny fail videos, pranks and original series. On OTT platforms, it was viewed for 5 million hours monthly. The Pet Collective is for those obsessed with their animal friends. 

Jukin said its channels generate 11 million monthly viewers on its current CTV platforms. The company said viewership is on track to double in 2021 from 2020’s levels. 

Top cable operators Comcast and Charter Communications, unable by themselves to make addressable advertising easy for marketers, have enlisted Dish Network and Vizio to try to solve their problem.

The new initiative is called Go Addressable and is designed to come up with industry-wide standards and solutions. 

In its official announcement, Go Addressable added that DirecTV was participating, along with cable operators Cox, Altice USA and Frontier Communications, pretty much covering the universe of pay-TV providers with addressable capabilities. 

Satellite companies like Dish have a national footprint, and have been able to mount addressable ad campaigns for big marketers. They also provide addressable advertising for political campaigns. 

Similarly, Vizio is able to insert targeted commercials into its sets all over the country and formed Project OAR, which aims to set standards for addressable advertising.

And one reason advertisers have been rushing into the over-the-top and connected TV market is that those commercials can be targeted and addressable like other digitally delivered advertising.

But cable companies each cover a specific part of the country and working together has been difficult for technological and business reasons.

In March, a study conducted by Forrester Consulting for companies including Dish Media, Canoe, Cadent, Comscore, Verizon Media, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia found that addressable TV is a priority for brands, but that it is being held back by operational complexity and a lack of education.

Two years ago, Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications formed On Addressability, an industry initiative aimed at helping the cable industry deliver addressable advertising at a time when marketers were looking to use data to better target their commercials to viewers likely to be interested in their products.

Last year, On Addressability issued a playbook designed to help distributors, programmers, ad buyers and advertisers take advantage of cable’s addressable advertising capabilities.

With the launch of Go Addressable, On Addressability is being phased out.

But being able to mount an addressable ad campaign over cable still seems to be a remarkable achievement.

Last November, AMC Networks and Canoe announced their first addressable campaign running multiple commercials within a single ad availability across Comcast and Charter homes.

In election years, DirecTV and Dish have teamed up to offer addressable markets to political campaigns.