Revenue for Dish Network and Sling TV was collectively down a record 10% year-over-year, according to parent company EchoStar’s second quarterly earnings report.

EchoStar posted $2.67 billion in pay TV revenues, down from $2.97 billion a year ago.

Also read: EchoStar Posts Q2 Loss as It Sheds 104,000 Pay TV Subscribers

That’s due in part to 182,000 Dish subscribers, who decided from April through June to discontinue their service, putting the company in what equity-research firm MoffettNathanson called “free fall.”

At the close of the quarter, the subscriber base for Dish’s core satellite-TV business was shrinking at a 12% rate, worse than the 11.8% decline at the end of last quarter.

Also Read: EchoStar Posts Q2 Loss as It Sheds 104,000 Pay TV Subscribers

Sling TV at least, reported a gain of 78,000 subscribers during Q2.

As it stands, EchoStar has roughly 8.07 million remaining pay TV subscribers, including 6.07 million Dish TV customers and 2 million Sling TV subscribers.

EchoStar and its high-profile chairman, Charlie Ergen, are investing billions of dollars trying to complete a national 5G wireless network just as its core revenue engine runs out of steam. 

“We’ve made our view clear. We see EchoStar’s odds of success as a wireless operator to be vanishingly small,” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said in a report issued today about EchoStar’s Q2 results. “We believe EchoStar is instead highly likely to go bankrupt, quite possibly by the end of the year.”

EchoStar has cut costs to compensate for its declining revenue, but pay TV EBITDA for the quarter still dropped $753 million, an 8% decrease year-over-year.

“Dish’s pay TV business simply isn’t large enough to be the cash generation engine that keeps the larger enterprise afloat,” Moffett wrote.

In the 12th straight quarter of decline, consolidated EBITDA fell to just $442 million, down 29% year-over-year.

EchoStar said it lost 104,000 pay TV subscribers in the quarter, finishing with 8.07 million customers. In the first quarter, it lost 348,000 subscribers.

The company had 6.07 million Dish TV satellite-TV subscribers, down from 6.26 million at the end of Q1 and 2 million Sling TV subscribers, up from 1.92 million. 

The company posted a net loss of $205.6 million, or 76 cents a share, compared to net income of $212.7 million, or 69 cents a share a year ago.

Revenue fell 9% to $3.952 billion from $4.356 billion a year ago.

Operating income before depreciation and amortization for Echostar’s pay TV business was $735 million, down from $818 million a year ago. Pay TV revenue was $2.676 million, down from $2.975 million.

“The EchoStar team continued to perform as planned in the second quarter of 2024. We directed efforts on aligning key business synergies and objectives, focusing on profitable customer acquisition and retention efforts, and making improvements in our go-to-market approach for Retail Wireless,” CEO Hamid Akhavan said. “In addition, we are in constructive discussions to address necessary financing, working to strengthen our consumer offerings and value propositions, enhancing our state-of-the-art Open RAN network, and driving profitability across the enterprise.”

In the first of what it says will be many live sports events streamed in the Ultra High-Definition format, Sling TV will stream Tuesday night's Major League All-Star Game in 4K for free for "select" subscribers. 

The game, which will be broadcast live by Fox starting at 8 p.m. ET from Arlington, Texas, will be available in 4K to Sling Blue subscribers (and subscribers to the Sling Blue and Orange rollup tier) in 16 major markets, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. (A full list of available markets can be found here.)

And only big-DMA-residing, Sling TV Blue-tier-subscribing users of "select" Roku and Amazon Fire TV OTT devices will be able to access Sling TV's 4K coverage. (That list is available here.)

So yeah, 4K on Sling TV is a little limited to start, but it's a move in the right direction.

Sling TV said it will present other upcoming live sports events in 4K, including NBCUniversal's coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics on USA Network, as well as college and pro football games on FS1, ESPN and other networks. 

Sling TV lost 135,000 subscribers in the first quarter of this year and dropped below 2 million customers. Leading virtual MVPD competitors YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV already offer limited 4K support. 

“With live sports now in 4K, we’re upping our game and giving fans front-row seats to every thrilling moment. Get ready to see your favorite sports like never before, with crystal-clear action that brings you right into the heart of the play," said Seth Van Sickel, senior VP of product and operations for Sling Video Services.

Dish Media said it has launched pause ads on Sling TV, its virtual multichannel video program distributor (vMVPD).

Pause ads put a sponsor’s message on the screen when the viewer pauses live or on-demand content.

The pause ad format has proved popular on streaming services such as Hulu, Peacock, Roku and Amazon Prime Video. 

Dish Media said that pause ads give advertisers an opportunity to engage with audiences in a clutter-free environment with 100% share of  voice.

Also Read: Dish Media Engages BrightLine for Interactive Ads on Sling TV

Pause ads appear 10 seconds after a viewer-initiated pause and disappear when content is resumed, ensuring a seamless and non-intrusive viewing experience.

Sling TV's version of the pause ads gives advertisers the flexibility to use video content or static graphics in their creative executions. Advertisers can also insert a QR code, making it easy for viewers to access more information or buy the product..

“We are always looking to provide advertisers with the most effective, full-funnel ad solutions," Tom Fochetta, senior VP at Dish Media, said. “Pause Ads introduce an additional opportunity for advertisers to lean into our first-party data and Sling TV’s robust targeting capabilities to create highly compelling and interactive ad experiences.” 

EchoStar said it lost another 348,000 pay TV subscribers so far this year, closing the first quarter with 8.18 million subscribers. That total includes 6.26 million Dish Network satellite-TV subscribers and 1.92 million Sling TV virtual multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) customers.

The company said the losses resulted from its emphasis on acquiring higher-quality subscribers.

Operating income before depreciation and amortization for EchoStar’s pay TV business dropped to $755.5 million from $777.6 million a year ago. Pay TV revenue fell to $2.7 billion from nearly $3 billion a year ago.  

Overall, EchoStar said it lost $107.4 million, or 40 cents a share, in the quarter, compared to net income of $253.5 million a year ago, or 82 cents a share.

Total revenue dropped 9% to 4.01 billion.

“The EchoStar team performed as planned in the first quarter of 2024. We concentrated efforts on integrating the EchoStar and Dish Network businesses in order to maximize synergies and cost savings, facilitate growth opportunities, and drive operational alignment,” CEO Hamid Akhavan said. “Overall, ARPU increased in every business unit and customer satisfaction has improved. In addition, the business continues to focus on addressing necessary financing, improving our position in retail wireless, densifying and expanding the wireless network, maximizing our profitability with the newly launched EchoStar XXIV/Jupiter 3, and acquiring higher-quality pay TV customers.”

After losing nearly 300,000 subscribers in 2023, Sling TV is looking for a way to keep customers around. 

With that in mind, the EchoStar/Dish-owned virtual MVPD has announced the launch of Arcade, which lets users play 10 simple video games, a few of them arcade classics, on the Sling TV app, even while they're watching live or recorded video content. 

The games include Tetris, Wheel of Fortune, Sweet Sugar, Solitaire Clash, Poker Online, Neon Rider, Pixel Dash, Centipede, Doodle Jump and Coin Town. 

Initially, only users of the Sling TV app on Android TV and Amazon Fire TV platforms will be able to use Arcade, Sling TV said. But the app will gain device support in the coming months, the company added. Sling TV also said new titles "will be added regularly." 

To launch Arcade, Sling TV is partnering with Play.Works, a provider of games and interactive entertainment features to other clients including Comcast, Cox, Canada's Videotron, Roku and Vizio. 

So how well do the games play and how fun are they?

Next TV couldn't access the new feature Wednesday on our Sling TV review account, running on Fire TV. We have an email into Sling TV to see if we're doing something wrong. 

“Sling continues to put its subscribers and users first. We want people to not only love the flexibility and control, but we want the entire experience to be fun and engaging,” said Gary Schanman, group president of Dish Video Services. “Sling is now more than just TV. We want people to enjoy their entertainment just as much as we do. The new Arcade offering combines some great classic games with our great TV programming. No other streaming platform gives you access to more entertainment options for free.”

Pay TV subscriber losses accelerated at EchoStar, which now includes Dish Network, contributing to a huge fourth-quarter loss.

Net pay TV subscribers fell by 314,000 to 8.53 million. The company lost 64,000 subs in the third quarter and 268,000 in the year-ago quarter. 

Dish Network satellite subscribers fell to 6.47 million from 6.82 million in the third quarter.

Subscribers to virtual multichannel video programming distributor Sling TV dropped to 2.06 million from 2.12 million last quarter. 

Pay TV revenue fell 12% to $2.8 million from $3.2 million a year ago.

The company blamed the net decrease in revenue on subscriber declines, most significantly in the pay TV segment.

Overall, EchoStar had a loss of  $2.03 billion, or $7.48 a share, in the fourth quarter. A year ago, EchoStar had net income of $984 million, or $3.21 a share.

The company said the loss was primarily attributable to a non-cash goodwill-impairment charge of $758 million, and an adjustment to the carrying value of the 800-MHz purchase option totaling approximately $1.6 billion.

Revenue fell 8% to $4.16 billion.

In the quarter, retail wireless revenues fell to $899.3 million from $928.1 million as the company lost 123,000 subscribers.

Broadband and satellite service revenue dropped to $449.8 million from $499.9 million. Broadband subscribers were down 59,000.

“We closed the year with the completion of the merger with Dish Network,” CEO Hamid Akhavan said. “The transaction combined Dish Network's satellite technology, streaming services, engineering expertise, retail wireless business and nationwide 5G network with EchoStar's premier satellite communications solutions, enterprise go-to-market capabilities and U.S.-based manufacturing.

“Collectively, it creates a global leader in terrestrial and non-terrestrial wireless connectivity and entertainment services,” he said. "With the close of the merger, we will continue to integrate our business and realize savings and operational efficiencies. We also will increase our focus on identifying and targeting the best, most profitable customers in each of our addressable market segments — Pay TV, Retail Wireless and Broadband and Satellite Services."

It's been more than eight and a half years since Dish Network came up with the idea, then novel, to package a skinny bundle of pay TV channels in a cheap, easy-to-sign-up-for, even-easier-to-quit OTT package.

By the fall of 2017, despite a UX that even Dish conceded was pretty terrible, Sling TV had surpassed 2 million paid users. 

And that's when the growth story pretty much ended. 

Also read: Dish Network Loses 284,000 Subs as Second-Quarter Profits Drop

On Tuesday, Dish revealed that Sling TV had lost another 97,000 subscribers in the second quarter -- a performance worse than the 55,000 lost customers in Q2 2022.

That puts Sling TV at just over 2 million remaining users. Hulu + Live TV, which launched more than two years after Sling TV, finished March with 4.4 million subscribers. (Disney will report updated Hulu quarterly customer numbers Wednesday.)

Google doesn't often break out subscriber numbers for YouTube TV, which also arrived two years following Sling's February 2015 debut. But with the addition of NFL Sunday Ticket, the equity analysts at Lightshed Partners estimate that the virtual MVPD has amassed around 6.6 million subscribers.

This scale, of course, matters -- it's the only real hedge operators have in terms of negotiating down spiraling content carriage and retransmission costs.

Sling TV negotiations are tied into the existing scale of Dish satellite TV, but that base is eroding pretty fast. Dish linear satellite lost another 197,000 users in the second quarter, and the platform is now decaying at a rate of 11.4% annually.

That's an acceleration from the all-time high rate of 11.2% registered in Q1.

All told, Dish has less than 9 million remaining pay TV subscribers across both satellite and vMVPD platforms. Dish remains the fourth biggest supplier of pay TV in America, trailing Comcast, Charter Communications and DirecTV ... with YouTube TV threatening to ultimately surpass it.

For its part, Dish is scrambling to complete the pricy buildout of its 5G network and stay out of bankruptcy court. Tuesday's announcement that Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen is recombining Dish with his infrastructure division, EchoStar, means Dish will have access to the EchoStar's balance sheet ... and $1.7 billion in cash on hand. 

Pay TV is merely a (failing) cash-generating part of that equation.

The $1.7 billion "is not enough because… well, there’s a hole in the bucket," wrote equity analyst Craig Moffett Tuesday. 

"Dish’s free cash flow, even with slower capital spending, is now firmly in negative territory," he added. "The once-core satellite TV business is imploding. The once-savior Sling TV is shrinking. The springboard-to-wireless Boost pre-paid business is unraveling. The transition-to-post-paid Boost Infinite is years delayed and nowhere to be seen. Consolidated EBITDA cratered by more than 40% YoY."

Dish Network reported lower second-quarter profits as it lost 294,000 more pay TV subscribers.

Dish also announced it made a deal to combine again with EchoStar Corp. Both companies are controlled by Dish chairman Charlie Ergen. The companies were separated in 2007.

Dish’s second-quarter net income was $200 million, or 31 cents  a share, compared to $523 million, or $82 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue dropped 7% to $2.91 billion from $4.21 billion.

Dish finished the quarter with 8.9 million pay TV subscribers, down 294,000 from the end of Q1 and 1.084 million from a year ago.

Satellite customers were down 197,000 from the first quarter and 890,000 from a year ago.

Dish’s Sling TV streaming service lost 97,000 subscribers, finishing the quarter with 2.003 million customers. A year ago it had 2.197 million subscribers, a loss of 194,000.

Under the proposed deal to combine Dish and EchoStar, EchoStar Corp. stockholders will receive 2.85 shares of Dish Network Class A common stock for each share of EchoStar Corporation class-A, class-C or class-D common stock and 2.85 shares of Dish Network class-B common stock for each share of EchoStar Corporation class-B common stock they own. 

The exchange ratio represents a premium of 12.9% to EchoStar stockholders as implied by the unaffected 30-day volume weighted average closing stock prices of the two companies on July 5, 2023, the last full trading day prior to media speculation regarding a potential transaction, Dish said. 

“This is a strategically and financially compelling combination that is all about growth and building a long-term sustainable business,” Ergen said. “Dish’s substantial past investments in spectrum and its wireless buildout, combined with EchoStar's recent launch of Jupiter 3, are expected to significantly reduce near-term capex requirements. The transaction is expected to generate significant cost and revenue synergies, and the strong asset portfolio of the combined company paired with its enhanced free cash flow generation capability and strengthened capital structure are expected to drive long-term value creation for our shareholders and other stakeholders.”

The press release headline proudly touts, “Sling Freestream Launches on Android Mobile Streaming Devices.”

Our reaction: Who launches a streaming app these days without support on Android phones, which control around 46% of the U.S. smartphone market?

But more than four months after Dish Network’s Sling TV unit launched its Freestream-branded FAST service, the app is now playable on the other half of the mobile device market that doesn't run on Apple’s iOS. 

Perusing the Sling Freestream supported device page, we couldn’t find a major gadget ecosystem that's not covered at this point, save for maybe Sony PlayStation game consoles. 

Meanwhile, Freestream — which said it has more than 400 free channels — is also touting discounts on subscription streaming services including AMC Plus, Showtime and Starz. 

To entice users to sign up for these premium channels, Sling invited us to “check out some of the premium shows premiering” on these pay platforms this summer, rattling of titles including AMC Plus’s The Walking Dead: Dead City and Cannes Confidential, as well as the second season of Starz’s only lightly observed pro-wrestling drama Heels. 

Yeah, again, there are more than 400 free channels to choose from. 

Dish Network’s first-quarter earnings dropped as it lost more subscribers, both on its satellite service and its Sling TV streaming service.

Analysts attributed some of the poor performance in part to a cyberattack that delayed the processing of payments and stalled customer service.

Dish finished the quarter with 9.198 million pay TV subscribers, down 552,000 from the end of year and down more than 1 million from a year ago. 

The company lost 318,000 satellite subscribers, finishing the quarter with 7.098 million customers. That’s down 895,000 from a year ago.

Dish’s Sling TV streaming service lost 10% of its subscribers, finishing the quarter with 2.1 million. A year ago Sling had 2.252 million subscribers.

In the quarter, Dish’s net income fell 48% to $223 million, or 35 cents a share, from $433 million, or 68 cents a share.

Revenue fell 9% to $3.96 billion.

Dish also finished the quarter with 7.91 million wireless subscribers, down 81,000.

“How much we can read into the rates of decline posted in a quarter this out of the ordinary isn’t entirely clear,“ MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said. “But it is beyond argument that the customers lost in the first quarter won’t be back. Trajectory aside, these declines are permanent.

"It is unclear whether this result would have been even worse had the company been fully able to process service-termination requests,“ Moffett said. “And it is therefore unclear whether results in Q2 will be similarly bad or even worse. The company only indicated that cybersecurity costs were fully behind them, and that all systems have been restored.”

Dish Network’s Sling TV unit, which just upped its FAST game with the launch of Freestream last month, has now surpassed 230 channels for the free-to-consumer platform. 

Most of the new channels are targeted to Spanish-speaking viewers, but there are a few notable English-language outlets in the mix, including Documentary+. 

Here's a list of the new channels, log lines courtesy of Sling TV:

• Anime X HIDIVE: Love anime? Check out HIDIVE’s action-packed assortment on Anime X HIDIVE! From classic series to hot hits fresh from Japan, it's got anime fans like you covered. Come discover your favorite new series with Anime X HIDIVE!
• Canela Cinema: 24/7 content from the most watched movies on Canela.TV including nostalgic and contemporary cinema from Hollywood, Mexico and all of LATAM.
• Canela.TV: 24/7 series, movies, documentaries, live news, and live sports.
• Canela Clasicos: Best Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Movies with Pedro Infante, María Félix, El Santo y Capulina.
• Canela Telenovelas: 24 hours of content of the well-known soap operas and series from Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Chile.
• Canela Deportes: 24 hours of the best live sports: soccer, baseball, boxing, MMA, action sports and more.
• Documentary+: Home to the world’s best documentaries — from Academy Award-winning classics and box office hits to festival darlings and cult favorites. Nonfiction storytelling at its best, curated by the best.
• FLOU Cine: The home for the best Latin American movies, from Argentina to Venezuela, with the rhythm and touch of the Caribbean.
• FLOU Caribeño: The best programming from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean region. Watch great films, TV series, comedy and variety shows from Dominican Rep., Puerto Rico, Central America and Venezuela on one channel.
• Mirror Now: An Indian 24/7 English-language news channel owned by India's largest media conglomerate, The Times Group. A powerful media voice distinguished by its sincerity and commitment towards people-centricity, Mirror Now covers national, international, business, sports, crime, and entertainment news in a fast-paced, crisp and concise manner.
• Amor Real: Relive this 19th-century story in which you will travel back in time to discover if love is real.
• La Fea Más Bella: Beauty is on the inside! The girls from the ugly duckling barracks are waiting for you for unending fun.
• La Que No Podia Amar: Drama, lies and passion await you at Hacienda Del Fuerte. Join Ana Paula in this love story.
• Mi Corazón Es Tuyo: Ana Leal’s story is worth telling over and over again. She lost everything, but Fernando changed her life.
• Nosey Escandalos: America’s hit daytime TV shows you can't stop watching. The Jerry Springer Show, Maury, Judge Dad and many more, available all day, every day, for free. ■

Outstanding news: There is yet one more free, ad-supported destination to stream the Pet Collective on television.

With the free ad-supported streaming (FAST) industry collectively predicted to bring in around $16 billion this year, according to TVRev, Dish Network streaming unit Sling TV announced last week an expansion of its FAST ambitions. 

"Sling Freestream" will build on the existing Sling Free, upping its payload to more than 210 channels and 4,100 on-demand titles. 

Freestream is available now on Roku using the Sling TV app, home to the Sling TV virtual pay TV service. Sling says Freestream is also rolling out on "Comcast, LG, Samsung, Vizio and Xbox devices."

Unlike the superseded Sling Free, which offered around 150 channels, users don't even need to do a free registration process to use the FAST. 

As for Freestream's live linear channels, they're largely the same ones you see on Roku Channel, Pluto TV and countless other freely available FASTs -- Cheddar News, ABC News Live, Buzzr, FailArmy, FilmRise, Hell's Kitchen, The Walking Dead Universe ... and yes, Pet Collective.  

Freestream also has a "channels" component that lets users sign up for premium subscription services, including AMC Plus, Discovery Plus and MGM Plus. 

Again, Sling Freestream is but one of many apps that offer wholesale access to premium streaming services, which like free channels Pet Detective and Fail Army, are happy to be discovered on as many platforms as they can be. 

As for Dish and Sling TV, it's difficult to make noise amid the increasingly crowded -- and homogenous -- FAST market, but they've already proliferated the Sling TV app across the connected TV universe, and they've already negotiated rights deals with most of the major entertainment companies, so why not play the FAST game a little harder?

It's not like Sling TV's core vMVPD business is going gangbusters. Dish just reported that Sling TV lost 77,000 more customers in the fourth quarter, with the 8-year-old service ending 2022 with 2.334 million customers -- 152,000 less than where it stood at the end of 2021. 

With Sling TV just raising vMVPD prices across its two tiers to the $40-a-month mark, growth prospects entering 2023 don't look explosive. 

"We know some people want free content, some may want a year-round paid subscription, while others may want to subscribe for certain events or shows. We have coupled world-class content with the option to easily flex in and out of premium pay TV, creating a one-of-a-kind entertainment experience," said Gary Schanman, group president of Sling TV, in a statement. 

In a major programming addition, Sling TV will now carry ABC owned stations in eight major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. 

Unfortunately for Sling Orange tier customers in those markets, who also have access to local NBC and FOX stations, the price of their service is going up another $5 to $45 a month. And the price of the combined Orange/Blue tier is also going up for them by $5 to $60 a month. 

It's unclear as to whether Sling Orange subscribers in the other three markets gaining access to ABC O&Os -- Raleigh-Durham, Fresno and Houston -- will also see a price bump. 

“For many years, Sling has been able to absorb the increasing costs of these local broadcast channels,” Sling TV President Gary Schanman said in a statement. “To carry ABC, FOX and NBC, we need to ensure our pricing includes some of the cost of delivering these services.” 

Sling TV just raised its national prices by five bucks for both its Orange and Blue tiers to $40 a month in November. 

Meanwhile, Sling TV lost 77,000 customers in the third quarter, reducing its base to 2.334 million subscribers -- roughly where it stood in 2018. 

Notably, 2018 was also the last year that Sling TV offered ABC channels -- it once made local ABC stations available in a since discontinued add-on package called "Broadcast Extra." 

Sling TV and its parent company, Dish Network, were involved in a carriage dispute with ABC overlord Disney back in October that saw ESPN and other Disney channels disappear from the Sling and Dish satellite program grids for an entire football weekend. 

It appears the ABC additions, which involved stations owned and operated by the broadcaster, were part of the retransmission and carriage renewal negotiations that were successfully hammered out during that period. 

With live sports now driving signups and churn for virtual pay TV services, it's also worth mentioning: The addition of ABC puts Sling TV at a competitive advantage over rival virtual pay TV services heading into the NBA Playoffs in just a few months, with Sling now carrying all three networks for games.

While cable channels TNT and ESPN share the first round, conference semifinals and conference finals, ABC broadcast has exclusive rights to the NBA Finals. Last June, the NBA Finals pitting the Golden State Warriors against the Boston Celtics averaged more than 20 million viewers. 

And Sling TV just turned itself into the cheapest option for watching the entire NBA post-season. 

FuboTV, for example, lacks carriage of TNT and is priced $30 a month higher. YouTube TV does carry all three major networks that license the NBA Playoffs, but even with a $30 off for three months promotion, it's still priced $10 higher than Sling.  Hulu+ Live TV also has the goods, but is priced at $70 a month. 

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. ■

The once red-hot "vMVPD wars" have settled into a kind of entrenched stalemate, and it seems like the first such skinny-bundled streaming service to market, Dish Network's Sling TV, has been stuck at its current level of around 2.4 million subscribers for years, yo-yo-ing up and down each quarter.

However, at CES 2023 in Las Vegas last week, the platform's top exec, veteran pay TV leader Gary Schanman, told TechCrunch that Sling is about to go on a bit of a bender in terms of innovation and change.

“Over the next number of quarters, you’ll see a lot faster innovation of the product and the product set,” Schanman told the tech pub. “When people join our company, we expect them to be creative and innovative and be all about winning. And so we’re starting to bring a lot more people into the company to help grow that."

First on Schanman's "winning is for winners" list is the addition of a streaming app staple -- user profiles. These are common features for SVOD services, improving the UX of individual users in a home. For example, if your spouse has already started on a series you want to start on, it's not fun when you click on it and it picks up midway through the ninth episode (or wherever she left off at).

We're starting to see profiles emerge as a common vMVPD feature, as well -- Hulu + Live TV has them, and so does FuboTV, for example.

Sling TV hasn't officially announced when it'll implement its new profiles feature.

As far as Sling TV is concerned, it has suffered no surfeit of UX advantage spanning from its beginnings, which is now -- believe it or not -- eight years ago.

Schanman, however, insists that price -- Sling TV is still far and away the cheapest vMVPD, despite a recent price increase to $40 a month -- is its winning feature.

“From the live TV perspective, we still have the best value in the market by far," he added. "We also have the most flexibility in the market. The truth is, you know, I think we’re a very pro-consumer customer offering. Most of our competitors are what I would call true one-for-one cable replacements, but they’re in some cases more expensive." ■

Sling TV will increase the monthly price of its twin tiers by $5, bringing the price of “Sling Orange” and “Sling Blue” to $40 a month.

The package combining the channels of both tiers will now be priced at $55 a month.

The price increase will impact new customers immediately. Sling TV’s existing 2.4 million customers will feel the pain on their next bill on or after Dec. 3.

“Sling doesn’t own the networks you watch — we pay programmers for their channels, and the price of programming continues to rise,” blogged Sling TV group president Gary Schanman.

Also read: The Mother of All Pay TV Blackouts? ESPN Takedown on Dish and Sling TV Stirs Football Fan Revolt

Sling TV parent company Dish Network just reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, signaling a return to customer growth for its seven-year-old virtual MVPD, Sling TV, which added 214,000 customers from July 1 to September 30. 

Sling TV hadn't added customers in a quarter since Q3 of 2021. In fact, this was Sling TV's best growth quarter in over two years, but the virtual pay TV platform is still down nearly 8% in customers year over year. 

Sling's third-quarter growth came despite a short-lived programming blackout of Disney networks, including ABC and ESPN, that took down pro and college football games on Dish and Sling TV for almost an entire weekend in early October. 

Dish quickly came to terms with Disney, its most expensive program licensing partner, and restored the networks.

Meanwhile, with 560,000 pay TV customers bolting Comcast’s far pricier Xfinity X1 video service in Q3, it was expected that some of them would maintain their football fix by opting for Dish's cheaper virtual pay TV alternative. 

It was also expected that Sling would announce a price increase soon after making its carriage renewal with Disney, but the operator held the line until after having solid numbers to report at its next earnings call. ■

Dish Network reported that it added 214,000 Sling TV subscribers in the third quarter, more than offsetting a drop in satellite subscribers to give the company an increase in pay TV subscribers compared to the second quarter.

The gain runs counter to cord-cutting, which has cost distributors including Comcast, Charter Communications and Verizon Communications subscribers this quarter.

Despite the gain, Dish’s revenue and profits fell in the quarter.

Dish finished the third quarter with 10.018 million pay TV subscribers, up 30,000 from the second quarter but down 962,000 from a year ago — a 9% drop.

The third quarter is usually relatively strong for pay TV, with the return of college and NFL football. Dish started the fourth quarter with a brief blackout of ESPN and the rest of The Walt Disney Co. networks, which might impact Dish’s fourth-quarter results. Dish also announced price increases at the start of the fourth quarter. 

Sling TV, Dish’s streaming virtual multichannel video programming distributor, finished the quarter with 2.411 million subscribers, up from 2.197 million subscribers at the end of Q2, but down 145,000 from a year ago when it had 2.556 million subscribers.

Dish had 7.607 million satellite subscribers, down 189,000 from the second quarter and down 817,000 from a year ago.

Dish Network’s net income fell to $412 million, or 65 cents a share in the quarter, from $557 million, or 88 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue fell 8% to $4.1 billion. The company’s average revenue per pay TV subscriber rose to $102.07 from $101.30 in the second quarter and $96.31 a year ago.

The company’s wireless subscribers rose to 8.007 million from 7.867 million in the second quarter but down from 8.774 million a year ago. ■

Struggling regional sports programmer Pac-12 Networks has filed suit against Dish Network, claiming that the pay TV service has improperly withheld licensing fees. 

The heavily redacted lawsuit, filed in a Colorado federal court, was obtained by San Jose Mercury News writer Jon Wilner, perhaps the most dialed-in reporter covering the troubled regional sports network and its equally turmoiled parent, the Pac-12 athletic conference. 

Also read: Fubo TV Deal with Altitude Sports Makes Denver One of the Nation's Most Interesting RSN Regions

Fees and other key elements pertaining to Dish's arrangement with the RSN are blacked out. But we are able to glean that Dish's program licensing agreement calls for the Pac-12 Network to show at least a specific number of live Pac-12 conference football games each season, which undoubtedly produce far and away the biggest audience for Pac-12 Network channels. 

And in the pandemic-affected 2020 season, only one game — a November non-conference contest between Colorado and San Diego State — made it onto the RSN. Pac-12 teams played severely truncated game schedules that year, with some schools logging as few as four games out of their usual 12-game schedules. Most Pac-12 games that did manage to get played were shown on ESPN and Fox Sports national feeds that season. 

The Pac-12 Network said it credited Dish for the lost games in 2020. But for some redacted reason, the pay TV operator also wants rebates on the 2018 and 2019 seasons, which were not impacted by COVID-19 — an aggression that will not stand, the RSN said.

Both Dish and the RSN refused comment. 

In Next TV's home base of Los Angeles, the Pac-12 Network and its six subordinate regional channels are carried by Dish Network and its Sling TV virtual MVPD, as well as Charter Communications, fuboTV, Frontier Fios and Vidgo. 

From Washington to Oregon, from California to Colorado and from Arizona to Utah, the RSN has been shunned by its footprint's largest pay TV operator, DirecTV, since it launched in 2012. 

Certainly, should this dispute include losing distribution on Dish and Sling TV — especially right now, with three Pac-12 football programs nationally ranked — it would be a bad blow to the RSN and its conference. 

The Pac-12 Network earned only $43 million in the COVID-impacted 2020 collegiate athletic season after generating $118 million in 2019. Compare that to the more than $1 billion the rival Big Ten Network will make its member schools in its new TV deal, and you begin to understand why two high-profile Pac-12 constituents, USC and UCLA, just announced they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten starting in the 2024 collegiate athletic season. ▪️

Cinedigm said its RetroCrush free ad-supported streaming TV channel has been added to the lineup of Dish Network’s virtual multichannel video programming distributor Sling TV.

Sling TV now carries 14 of Cinedigm’s streaming channels. 

Also: Words of Wisdom From Cinedigm's Chris McGurk (Bloom) 

“The expansion of our partnership with Sling TV embraces Cinedigm’s mission to bring its channels to the widest enthusiast audiences possible,” John Stack, senior director of Cinedigm business development, said. “In turn, Sling will provide the opportunity for a passionate fan base to immerse itself in best-in-breed classic anime content it won’t find elsewhere with the addition of RetroCrush.”

RetroCrush is dedicated to the Golden Age of anime. The RetroCrush line-up currently includes more than 100 series and 40 features.

The other Cinedigm channels on Sling TV are Bloody Disgusting, The Bob Ross Channel, Comedy Dynamics, Real Madrid TV, Dove Channel, CONtv, Docurama, The Only Way Is Essex, MyTime TV, The Elvis Presley Channel, So … Real, Film Detective and Lonestar. ■

On an early Saturday evening, Next TV was entertaining a few college-football-loving friends and family members at its Mid-City Los Angeles office, scrolling the Sling TV program guide with increasing consternation, hunting for the inexplicably hard-to-find ESPN network and its live coverage of the resurgent USC Trojans playing Arizona State.

After about three minutes of fruitless searching, it dawned on the confused Next TV  — our colleague Jon Lafayette had written earlier in the day about Dish Network's programming blackout of Disney networks. Now, Jon might have ignored our nagging advice about using sticky names like ESPN in headlines to better connect the implicative dots to consumers. 

But suddenly we got it. ESPN — along with ABC and every other programming network owned by Disney — has been blacked out on Dish Network and Sling TV ... on a college-football Saturday. A day before an NFL Sunday. And two days before a Monday Night Football featuring a rematch of last year’s NFC Championship game, the Los Angeles Rams vs. the San Francisco 49ers. MNF is a programming franchise that ESPN pays $1.1 billion a season to present. 

By Sunday night, Dish and Disney announced a handshake deal to restore the channels. But on Saturday and Sunday, we football fans ran with the hunted. 

With our resurgent Trojans, a team full of transfer-portal “student athletes,” 4-0 and ranked No. 6 nationally entering the game — and driving for an early-game TD, according to the Gamecast component of my ESPN smartphone app — Next TV acted decisively ... and impulsively. 

We ditched our $35-a-month Sling TV subscription — a service we've had since 2015 — and signed up for the $65-a-month YouTube TV virtual pay TV platform. 

Now, if you're asking Next TV to support our clickbait headline with cold, hard statistics, providing some idea as to how many like-minded Sling TV and Dish Network subscribers have rendered the same calculus this weekend, we can only tell you that Pac-12 primetime matchups tend to go late into the evening. And it is the season of Oktoberfest — we cheered on our Cardinal and Gold in the spirited way you would for the blue-blood football program of a rich, entitled private university.  

But we digress. 

Given the timing and the consumer implications, this could have been one of the nastier pay TV blackouts in recent technology-media-telecom history.

Linear satellite TV service Dish Network and virtual MVPD Sling TV lost a combined 252,000 subscribers in the second quarter without any major programming disruptions. Between them, they serve around 10 million pay TV homes, a big chunk of them lovers of live sports. 

Dish chairman Charlie Ergen has a long, well-known history of going to the mat on expensive program licensing negotiations. Ergen has chest-thumped on numerous occasions about how Dish — a company whose priorities now rest in its nascent wireless business — is willing to drop networks and “walk away” if the licensing price is too high. 

Once again, Ergen has backed up his rhetoric with shockingly disruptive action. 

If this impasse were to drag on for any significant length of time, we could have been witnessing the ultimate demise of Sling TV — a virtual bundle that’s stagnated at just over 2 million subscribers and has been sold largely as a complimentary mechanism for delivering live sports to homes without the pay TV Full Monty. 

For many consumers — and Sling TV partners — delivery of ESPN is Sling TV's primary value proposition. Take it away and all that's left of Sling TV are two awkwardly comprised skinny-bundled tiers (“Blue” and “Orange”), each lacking valuable pay TV components … and at least for this past weekend, perhaps the most valuable one of all.

Just anecdotally based on our own impulse decision to raise our pay TV bill by $30 a month at the drop of a hot wing Saturday evening — and all the activity we’re seeing on social Sunday morning — we think the number of Sling and Dish defections, despite the quick resolution of the blackout, could still end up being rather shocking when Q4 subscriber numbers are released early next year. ▪️

FuboTV ranked first among live TV streaming service providers and Dish Network topped cable and satellite companies in the latest J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey, as consumers picked price as the biggest driver in choosing a video offering.

FuboTV led live TV streamers with a score of 789 out of a possible 1,000 points, the first year that J.D. Power offered the category. FuboTV was followed by Sling TV (786), YouTube TV (779), Hulu + Live TV (775) and DirecTV Stream (751) in the J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Television Service Provider Satisfaction Study. Overall, streaming companies had an overall score of 774, far outpacing their cable and satellite competition, which had an overall showing of 699 points.

In a press release, J.D. Power said consumers picked price as the deciding factor in choosing a TV service provider. Cable and satellite video service providers charged an average of $110 per month while streamers charged an average of $68 per month, according to the survey.

“Delivering video to myriad devices both in-home and mobile is actually pretty difficult and yet the service providers in cable, satellite and streaming all make it look easy, creating ever higher customer expectations,” said J.D. Power managing director Ian Greenblatt in a press release. “Highest quality content is quite costly to produce or acquire for all providers. Operating the needed networks and equipment for cable and satellite TV from start to finish versus streamers who can use those networks for middle and last-mile delivery for hundreds of thousands of concurrent streams, are vastly different at a product level regarding cost.  Live TV streamers (and their customers) are therefore the beneficiaries of the imbalance and can be seen as providing more value for the subscription dollars spent.”

Dish was the top ranked cable and satellite service provider nationally for the fifth year in a row, with a score of 720. Comcast’s Xfinity service placed second with 706 points and DirecTV finished third with 699 points.

Dish took the cable and satellite regional crown in two other areas -- the South Region (comprising Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas) with a score of 736; and the West region (including Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming) with a score of 716.

Midco (formerly Midcontinent Communications) was the highest ranked cable operator in the North Central Region (comprising Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin) with a score of 721. Comcast’s Xfinity placed second in that region with a 701 score and Dish finished third with a score of 701.

In the East Region, Verizon Fios grabbed the top spot among cable and satellite service providers with a score of 749, followed by Dish (713) and Xfinity (699). ■

Dish Network said it reached a new carriage agreement with Game Show Network, ending a three-week blackout.

The Sony Pictures Television-owned network is being restored to the Dish satellite-TV and Sling TV virtual MVPD lineups.

“We’re pleased to have reached a multi-year agreement that benefits all parties, especially our customers,” Brian Neylon, executive VP and group president, Dish TV, said. “I want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding as we worked through the negotiations.”

Dish had accused GSN of backing out of an agreement, resulting in the blackout.

GSN said it couldn't agree to the terms Dish was demanding.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“We are happy to have entered into a long-term agreement with Dish and that Dish customers can resume watching their favorite shows on Game Show Network for years to come,” Game Show Network executive VP of distribution Tim Carry said. ■

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. ■

Sling TV users can now sign up, sign into and watch Discovery Plus via the Sling TV app, providing yet another wholesale partnership for the Warner Bros. Discovery SVOD service. 

Sling TV users, whether they subscribe to the virtual pay TV platform or use its free ad-supported iteration, can sign up and view both the $4.99 partially ad-supported Discovery Plus tier or the $6.99 no-ad version.

They'll watch Discovery's array of largely non-fiction shows, including 90 Day: The Single Life, with their required full concentration, secure in their knowledge that they have to distract themselves by remembering another user name and password beyond their Sling TV credentials. 

Also read: HBO Max Survives Un-Kneecapped ... for Now

Of course, Sling TV recoups a portion of the revenue and gets the data another accoutrements that come with controlling the coveted "customer relationship."

WBD has already established similar wholesale relationships for Discovery Plus within Amazon Prime Video Channels and Roku Channel. HBO Max, which launched in the Roku Channel in May, looks poised to return to Prime Video Channels, as well. 

“With Discovery Plus, we are committed to making our world-class content accessible to all of our fans across all platforms, and this partnership with Sling and Dish allows us to deliver on that commitment,” said Gabriel Sauerhoff, senior VP of digital distribution and commercial partnerships for Warner Bros. Discovery. “We always put our dedicated viewers at the forefront of our decision making, and we’ll continue to do so as we expand the reach of our beloved programming, talent and brands.”

Added Gary Schanman, group president for Sling TV: “The addition of discovery+ on our platforms offers iconic and acclaimed content for the a la carte experience our customers love. We offer more than 50 premium a la carte services to enable our users to customize their viewing experience, all with a single account login so they can easily manage their services in one place.”

It was only a year ago that Andy Forssell, then in charge of HBO and HBO Max, told investors that HBO could lose as many as 5 million customers as it extracted itself from its Amazon Prime Video Channels ties. 

The decision had already delayed the launch of HBO Max onto Amazon's popular device ecosystem, Amazon Fire TV, for the first six months of Max's life in the streaming marketplace back in 2020. 

It was all worth it, Forssell, reasoned, to keep the erstwhile WarnerMedia in control of its data and user experience by interfacing directly with consumers via the company's own app. 

A year later, the erstwhile Time Warner Inc./WarnerMedia has been spun off from AT&T and merged yet again, with Discovery management, led by CEO David Zaslav, taking over and reversing course on pretty much everything Kilar did. 

Last week, during WBD's Q2 earnings report, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels described the pullout from wholesale distribution as yet one more element of Kilar's strategy that WBD management was "course correcting."

"Certain actions taken to limit HBO Max B2B distribution provided a headwind to performance," Wiedenfels said. 

Look for the combined HBO Max/Discovery Plus app to take Discovery Plus' place within the Sling TV subscriptions menu when it launches next year. 

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.   ■

The Elvis Presley Channel has launched on platforms including LG Channels, Amazon’s Freevee, Vizio, Sling, Xumo, Plex and Local Now.

The channel, created in partnership by Elvis Presley Enterprises and ABG Entertainment, with Cinedigm, features the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in films and specials, as well as series and lifestyle programming.

Original series are in development.

"We are thrilled for fans to immerse themselves in Elvis' world with the launch of The Elvis Presley Channel," said Matt Abruzzo, senior director - brand management, entertainment, Authentic Brands Group (ABG), owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises, LLC. "The Elvis fandom is incredibly passionate, and when it comes to serving enthusiastic fan bases, no one does it better than Cinedigm."

Cinedigm announced plans to launch the channel last year.   ■

Sling TV is coming off a first quarter during which it lost 234,000 customers, and it might have bled even more during the typically downer Q2 period. So it's about time for an aggressive summer promotion. 

Sling will kick off its "Freeview Weekends" starting Friday when it offers its customers three free days of access to Showtime, right in time for the Season 5 premiere of The Chi.

Subsequent weekends will feature a free run at Epix, Hallmark Movies Now, Curiosity Stream, Sundance Now, AMC Plus and other premium direct-to-consumer services. 

Sling TV users don't have to do anything -- the free content will automatically become available and unavailable, with select shows promoted on their home page. The Freeview Weekends promotion ends in August. 

"If a user wants to subscribe to any of our nearly 50 premium standalone services à la carte, they can do it. And now with Freeview Weekends, our current subscribers can 'try before they buy' every summer weekend with no strings attached by simply turning on Sling to ensure they pay only for what they want to watch,"  said Gary Schanman, executive VP and group president of Sling TV. ■

Having just expanded to Portland, Ore. this week, Evoca is slowly evolving a business model around its innovative virtual pay TV service, which uses ATSC 3.0 broadcast signals and a limited amount of IP bandwidth to deliver its live video.

Local access to key regional sports networks and local broadcast channels are key to the core Evoca offering, which is priced at around $25 and includes a proprietary Android TV-enabled NextGen TV receiver.

But why mess up a perfectly good emerging business model by licensing a bunch of expensive programming networks yourself?

That's perhaps what Boise, Idaho-based Evoca is thinking with its new Sling TV partnership. The service is offering its users the chance to combine their Evoca bundle with one of the three Sling TV domestic tiers -- the $35-a-month Sling Orange and Sling Blue, and the $50-a-month combined Blue/Orange service -- at a $5 discount.

Evoca users can combine their plan with either the 31-channel Sling Orange or the 41-channel Sling Blue (which has more channels but doesn't include ESPN) and pay $55 a month. They can add both Sling TV tiers for $70 a month.

The partnership works because the two bundles are indeed complimentary -- Sling TV has access to national sports via ESPN, Fox Sports 1 & 2 and TNT. But it doesn't offer key broadcast networks (ABC and CBS), and it has limited access to regional sports networks.

So, for example, if you're a Denver-area sports fan -- living in a place where Evoca is particularly strong in terms of RSNs -- you can have access to the Big Four broadcast affiliates, as well as Altitude Sports and AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain via Evoca, then compliment that with the national girth of Sling TV, all while staying at a price point that's competitive with leading virtual pay TV providers YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV.

“Between Sling’s innovative live streaming packages and Evoca’s unique converged broadcast-broadband system, consumers can now experience the future of television at an affordable price,” said Todd Achilles, president, and CEO of Evoca. “This partnership supports our commitment to provide high-quality regional and national sports, news, lifestyle, and educational programming to the communities we serve.”

Launching in Boise two years ago, Evoca has expanded to Phoenix, Arizona, Denver and now, Portland. It hasn't released figures as to how many users it has. 

At least early on, Evoca led its marketing with the idea that its ATSC 3.0 foundation would allow it to reach slower broadband rural regions in a way the bigger vMVPDs could not. However, those bundling Sling TV with their Evoca service will receive it the same way everyone else does -- via IP. 

Sling TV lost more than 230,000 subscribers in the first quarter, matching a nearly equal number bled by sibling linear satellite-TV service Dish Network. 

Overall, parent company Dish lost 462,000 pay TV customers, with Dish satellite TV finishing Q1 with just under 8 million subscribers, and Sling TV with just 2.25 million. Dish lost a combined 230,000 pay TV customers in the first three months of 2021. 

“If you are watching two hours of TikTok, you are not watching two hours of Discovery,” Dish chairman Charlie Ergen told investors during Friday‘s Q1 earnings call. “The video business needs to innovate ... 15-16 minutes of commercials needs to change.”

In January, Sling TV upped prices for its core tiers by $5 to $35  per month. 

In terms of scale, Sling TV has been running in place for several years — it now has fewer customers than it did two years ago, when it finished Q1 2020 with 2.31 million.

Dish Network, which started reporting its full Q1 earnings at 10 p.m. ET Friday, also said that its net income dropped to $433 million during the quarter vs. $630 million in Q1 2021. ▪️

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. ■

Sling TV is at a crossroads. Once believed to be the successor to traditional linear TV distribution, offering skinnier programming bundles and lower prices, Sling TV finds itself struggling to grow its customer base, compete with streaming video services and direct-to-consumer offerings from content creators. At the same time, the service is vying for attention within its own parent company -- Dish Network -- which at the moment seems much more focused on the wireless side of the business.

But who can blame Dish? With its satellite TV business slowly disappearing -- it lost about 273,000 subscribers in Q4 and has shed more than 3 million customers over the past five years -- television distribution is becoming less attractive with each passing year. Dish expects to launch its first wireless market -- Las Vegas -- later this year and has revealed more than 25 other cities that are expected to receive service in 2022. 

Sling TV lost about 107,000 subscribers in Q4, which Dish CEO Erik Carlson said during the company’s Q4 conference call with analysts was due to the company’s failure to execute, adding that the company is focused on re-engineering its platform and user interface. 

Also: Sling TV Takes Center Stage 

So far, Sling has managed to outlast at least one of the early OTT competitors -- Sony PlayStation Vue closed its doors in 2020. But the high cost of programming and increased competition with streamers has affected every player in the space. Hulu Plus Live TV has about 4.3 million customers and YouTube TV about 3 million, but are priced at more than double the rate of Sling TV and added to the tough going of the business. In December 2020, Hulu Plus Live TV raised its price to $69.99 per month, but added free access to streamers Disney Plus and ESPN Plus as part of the package. YouTube TV raised its monthly rate to $64.99 in 2020. 

Also: Review: Sling TV

Where Can I Get Sling TV?

The Sling TV app is available through the app stores of most of the major connected TV brands. Basically a broadband connection is all you need to access Sling TV. The service is available through several devices, including: Apple TV, Chromecast, Android TV, Google TV, Roku, and Samsung, Vizio and LG SmartTVs. Broadband-only services like Xfinity Flex and Cox’s Contour Stream also allow access via the Sling TV app.

How Much Does Sling TV  Cost?

Sling TV is separated into two main packages -- Sling Blue and Sling Orange, each which are available for about $35 per month. The company offers a $10 discount for the first month of service. Sling Orange can be streamed on one device and has 32 channels of programming -- mainly entertainment and news offerings like A+E, AMC, BBC America, CNN, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, Disney Channel and three sports networks -- ESPN, ESPN 2 and ESPN 3. Sling Blue can be streamed on three devices, offers 42 channels and includes Fox Sports 1, Fox News Channel, TBS, TNT, USA Network and Vice.

For $50 per month, subscribers can stream 50 channels on one-to-three devices, depending on the network. 

Each package also includes 50 hours of DVR storage.

What Shows Can You Watch on Sling TV?

Programming from 50 networks is available through the service, with Sling Orange viewers able to watch about 35 channels, including six that aren’t available on Sling Blue like Freeform (which has youth-oriented shows like Single Drunk Female; Good Trouble and The Secret Life of the American Teenager), sports programming and news from ESPN, ESPN 2 and ESPN 3; kids programming from Disney Channel; and automobile-focused shows like Roadkill Garage and Engine Masters from Motor Trend. 

Sling Blue subscribers get access to 42 channels including sports network Fox Sports 1; general entertainment networks like Bravo (Top Chef and Real Housewives of New Jersey); E! (The Bradshaw Bunch; Clash of the Cover Bands); Syfy (Resident Alien, The Expanse); USA Network (WWE Raw and Temptation Island); and TruTV (Billy on the Street and The Chris Gethard Show); news channels like Fox News Channel, MSNBC and HLN and education-focused channels like Discovery Channel (Naked and Afraid, Gold Rush), National Geographic (Wicked Tuna, The Incredible Dr. Pol) and TLC (My 600-Lb. Life, Sister Wives); all of which are unavailable on Sling Orange. All 50 networks are available for a $50 monthly subscription to Sling Blue and Orange. 

Over-the-air broadcast networks can be accessed via a separate digital antenna the customer purchases on their own (or free via Sling TV after paying for two months of service). For $49, subscribers can get access to OTA channels through an AirTV2 device (regularly priced at $149) and a digital antenna, after paying for three months of service. In select markets like New York, Chicago, Dallas and others, Fox and NBC local stations are available via the Sling Blue service. ■

Dish Network said its seminal virtual MVPD service Sling TV ended 2021 with 2.49 million subscribers, marking a decrease of 107,000 users in Q4 and putting the platform's customer base below where it stood two years ago. 

Sling TV raised its prices by $5 across tiers in the fourth quarter. 

Overall, Dish reported the loss of 273,000 pay TV customers in the fourth quarter, factoring in satellite TV losses, too. 

Dish, which is pivoting to wireless, reported a full-year 15% revenue uptick to $17.88 billion. 

"Sling is a profitable business that will grow. It's going to require a little patience, but with the platform overhaul last year, we're now positioned to be able to innovate and enhance the customer experience with new features and differentiated offerings," Dish CEO Erik Carlson said during Thursday's Dish Network Q4 earnings call. 

Dish Network said that its fourth quarter earnings fell as it lost pay-TV subscribers.

Net income dropped to $552 million, or 87 cents a share, from $733 million, or $1.24 a share, a year ago.

Revenue fell 2% to $4.45 billion.

Dish said it lost 273,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter. A year ago it lost about 133,000 subscribers.

The company closed the quarter with 10.71 million pay-TV subscribers, down from 10.98 million in the third quarter. It had 8.22 million Dish TV subscribers, down from 8.42 million, and 2.49 million Sling TV subscribers, down from 2.57 million.

A year ago, Dish had 11.29 million pay-TV subscribers. It had 8.69 million Dish TV subscribers and 2.47 million Sling subs. ■

Magnite, the sell-side ad platform, said it launched a new technology designed to optimize the programmatic sale of live streaming video advertising inventory.

The Live Stream Accelerator was used by Sling TV for its live sports inventory. While using LSA, Sling saw a 47% lift in ad conversions compared to the previous five weeks.

By operating more efficiently, LSA lets publishers deliver ads to opportunities that otherwise would have been timed out. Magnite said in one-hour live events, publishers often lose 51 seconds of advertising revenue because of inventory time outs.

Live programming is becoming an increasingly important part of streaming, attracting both viewers and advertisers, making monetizing live events a growing priority.

“Live CTV is a key differentiator for Sling, there is no better or more valuable medium for advertisers to reach highly engaged viewers, in real time, with personalized, relevant messaging,” said Jessica DuFresne, head of ad ops and digital ad tech, Dish Media. “Utilizing LSA allowed us even greater, more efficient, deliveries of live-viewing audiences to our advertisers, while simultaneously delivering an enhanced experience for our customers, all while maintaining the highest privacy standards.“

Magnite said its LSA also helps regulate queries per second from elevated audience spikes, resulting in less throttling and more filled ad slots. It also addresses more actionable supply making it easier for advertisers to access premium and scalable inventory, to reach the audiences they want, without technical limitations.

“Live CTV offers a can’t-miss opportunity to engage with a highly receptive audience, but has historically been harder for advertisers to activate against due to its unpredictable nature and limited available inventory,” said Paige Bilins, senior VP of product management at Magnite. “LSA is built to handle the complexities of live CTV, creating efficiencies that benefit publishers, advertisers and viewers alike.” ■

Sling TV just got into crypto. 

The Dish Network-owned virtual pay TV company announced Friday that its customers can now pay their monthly bills using a wide variety of cryptocurrency types via BitPay. 

One of the largest global blockchain payment providers, BitPay supports more than 90 crypto wallet applications, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin and Shiba Inu Coin. 

New Sling TV users must use American Dollars to sign up for the service, but can use crypto through BitPay for subsequent payments. 

Notably, customers cannot set up recurring payments using BitPay -- they'll have to go in every month and conduct a manual pre-payment ranging from one to six months. 

Sling TV has set up this support page to walk customers through the process. 

Sling TV grew by 117,000 subscribers in the third quarter, but the streaming service raised its price by $5 a month across its "Blue" and "Orange" programming packages in November. 

Parent Dish has yet to announce a date for its fourth-quarter earnings report. 

Vizio has added support for Sling TV to the operating system it builds into its smart TVs, Vizio SmartCast. 

Irvine, Calif.-based Vizio just touted 15 million users for SmartCast. The addition to the platform places Sling TV alongside virtual MVPD competitor fuboTV, as well as other OTT apps that have been added to the SmartCast home screen, a list that includes Apple TV Plus, Discovery Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Peacock and Amazon Prime Video. 

Sling TV touted just under 2.6 million users as of the end of September, but it can use any boost it can get, with its growth stagnating over the last several years. 

“With home screen access on Vizio SmartCast, we are able to deliver our premier service to millions of users across America,” said Seth Van Sickel, senior VP of product and operations for Sling TV, in a statement. “Sling continues to be the most convenient way to watch the shows you love when you want, where you want, and on your terms across a wide breadth of device options.” ■

We are collectively over, for better or worse, lamenting the commercialization of the holiday season. We now gleefully lean into it with the post-Thanksgiving purchasing orgy known as Black Friday ... a multi-day celebration of what's left of the global supply chain that leads into another mass marketing concept, "Cyber Monday." 

And subscription streaming is in on the action. Here are five deals we found:

Hulu Basic for 99 Cents a Month

Hulu's most popular and affordable tier just got dirt-cheap for 12 months, with Hulu offering its basic, ad-supported plan to new and eligible returning customers for 99 cents a month for one year. 

Given the regular $6.99-a-month regular price, that's a savings of $72 a year. 

The offer expires on Nov. 30. Returning Hulu customers must have quit the service more than a month prior to be eligible. 

Sling TV Free for One Month

Sling TV is offering new subscribers a free month of service when they commit to a first month. The offer, however, ends Monday. 

If you don't act fast enough, no biggie--Sling TV is still offering both its Blue and Orange tiers, each regularly priced at $35 a month, for only $10 the first month. 

The combined tier (regularly $50 a month) is priced at $20 a month. 

Three Free Months of Apple TV Plus Without Buying an Apple Gadget?

It's not easy to find an Apple TV Plus user who actually pays the $4.99 rate for the service, given Apple's aggressive promotional strategy for its two-year-old SVOD service. 

And these days, you don't even need to buy an iPhone or Macbook Pro to get the exclusive home to Ted Lasso for free. As an enticement to signing up for a store purchasing account, Best Buy is offering three free months of Apple TV Plus, as well as six free months of Apple Music. 

Again, you must create a Best Buy account to get the promo. 

YouTube TV for $14.99 for the First Month

Google is offering a steep first-month discount for the most popular virtual pay TV service, YouTube TV, marking the regular $64.99-a-month price  down to just $14.99. 

YouTube TV offers more than 85 channels and features the most robust selection of live-sports options in the vMVPD realm.

Amazon Channels Free for the First Two Months

We might have saved the best for last with this one. 

Amazon is offering two months free of a bunch of SVOD services that it sells through its Amazon Prime Video Channels platform. Included in that mix is Paramount Plus, Discovery Plus, Showtime, Starz, AMC Plus and Britbox. 

The offer is only available to Amazon Prime Video members and ends Monday, Nov. 29. 

Having managed to add 117,000 subscribers in the third quarter, despite the fact that it upped prices by $5 a month in July, Sling TV has set an aggressive Black Friday promotion with the aim of sustaining its momentum. 

Sling TV is offering new subscribers a free month of service when they commit to a first month from Nov. 26-29. 

The offer applies to the $35-a-month Sling Orange and Sling Blue tiers, as well as the $50 combined tier. 

Currently, Sling TV is offering new customers the first month of Sling Orange and Sling Blue service for $10 each ($20 for Orange & Blue).

Dish Network reported 2.56 million Sling TV subscribers at the end of the third quarter, slightly less than the 2.69 million it had two years prior. ■

Updated 11/5/21: This story was updated to include a corrected Sling TV subscriber addition count.

Sling TV added around 117,000 customers in the third quarter, upping the Dish Network-owned virtual pay TV platform's base to 2.56 million users--roughly what it had in a period dating back two years. 

Dish reported 2.69 million Sling TV subscribers in the third quarter of 2019, and 2.46 million in the third quarter of last year. 

The most recent stagnant growth comes as Sling TV upped the price of its two core tiers, "Blue" and "Orange," by $5 to $25 a month in July. But Sling TV also embarked on a major upgrade of its UX, finishing deployment of the updated app across major connected TV platforms including Roku and Amazon Fire TV. 

Overall, Dish reported the loss of 13,000 pay TV subscribers across Dish satellite TV and Sling TV services, with the gains of the latter offsetting the 130,000 lost souls fo the linear-based former.

Dish earned $3.22 billion in pay TV revenue in the third quarter, up just under 1% year over year. The satellite TV company reported a profit of $700,000 in the third quarter on its pay TV operations, down 12 from Q3 2020.

Sling TV, which was the first "vMVPD" to launch back in February 2015, is now the third largest virtual pay TV operator, trailing YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV. 

Sling TV is hoping that those hundreds of millions of views Barstool Sports gets on social media translates into a some platform engagement for its comparatively little virtual pay TV service. 

The Dish Network-owned virtual MPVD has announced the formation of a new, exclusive linear channel, built around the Boston-spawned, bro-culture-fueled digital native brand. 

Just as the 2021 football season is about to kick off, the Barstool Sports Channel launches on Sling TV with a range of take-heavy sports betting- and fantasy-themed programming already available for free on the open internet. Among them: Barstool College Football Show, The Pro Football Football Show, 'One Bite' Pizza Reviews, Pardon My Take and Call Him Papi with David Ortiz and Jared Carrabis.

The new linear channel will also include, however, new episodes of The Brandon Walker College Football Show that are exclusive to Sling TV. 

According to Tubular Labs data spotted by Digiday this morning, 79% of the 536 million minutes of digital video viewing generated by Barstool Sports in August came via Facebook. Barstool Sports also has apps on Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV. 

Sling TV, which already features other digital-first brands such as Tastemade and Bon Appetit in its channel guide, hopes even a small fraction of the Barstool's audience migrates over to its platform. 

Sling TV just reported around 2.4 million users and significantly trails in stature to Hulu + Live TV (4 million subscribers) and YouTube TV (3 million), two vMVPDs that launched several years after Sling TV did. 

As for Barstool Sports, the brand keeps proliferating. In case you haven't been keeping up, the startup sports blog, founded by the brash, polarizing Dave Portnoy  and nurtured by The Chernin Group, was valued at $450 million in early 2020 when it was sold to casino company Penn National Gaming. 

"We're confident that Barstool's incredibly engaged and loyal audience will embrace the Sling experience, where we continually push the boundaries in streaming live and on-demand TV," said Sling TV President Michael Schwimmer, in a statement. 

Added Erika Nardini, CEO of Barstool Sports: "Having our own channel on Sling is another way for Barstool to continue to move the goal post and break barriers in broadcast and streaming. We are ready to bring both Barstool and Sling's engaged audiences our content and personalities in time for the college and pro football seasons and much more."

Sling TV returned to quarterly growth for the first time since the third quarter of 2020, adding 65,000 subscribers in the second quarter.

The gains compare to a loss of 56,000 subscribers in Q2 of last year, and it's a hopeful sign for Sling TV, with the second quarter usually presenting a tough growth opportunity for pay TV operators. (That's often the month that owners of vacation rentals shut down their service, for one example.)

The Dish Network-owned live streaming service had about 2.439 million users as of the end of June 30, making it the third largest virtual pay TV (vMVPD) service behind Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV. 

As Dish conceded earlier this year, that's not a great metric, considering that Dish--which launched in February 2015--was first out of the gate by a factor of several years. 

Acknowledging that its UX game for Sling TV is lacking, Dish is in the process of rolling out a dramatically revised user experience, which recently deployed on select high-end Roku devices. 

But any positive subscriber boost might be offset by recent Sling TV price increases--it's monthly price for both the Sling Blue and Sling Orange tiers just increased from $30 to $35 a month. 

Meanwhile, Dish Network's broader pay TV business faces the prospect of a blackout with the largest broadcast station operator, Sinclair. 

Overall, Dish reported a net declined of 67,000 pay TV subscribers, with its legacy satellite TV service losing another 132,000 customers in the second quarter. Dish has 10.99 million remaining pay TV clients, 

Dish reported a revenue gain of nearly 29% in the second quarter to $449 million, with the company picking up an additional 200,000 wireless customers after its purchase of Republic Wireless. 

Dish finished Q2 with 8.9 million wireless customers. 

Cinedigm said it reached an agreement that puts three of its streaming channels on Dish's Sling TV service.

The three channels are Dove Channel, CONtv and Docurama.

Also Read: YouTube TV Launches Cinedigm Channels as $4.99 Add-Ons

"Since its inception, Sling TV has been at the forefront of live TV streaming," said Jennifer Soltesz, VP of business development & strategy at Cinedigm. "Working with Sling TV not only allows us to reach a diverse, new audience, but it gives us a partner with the same forward-thinking drive. We can't wait to show these new customers the amazing networks Cinedigm has to offer." 

Cinedigm has been broadening the distribution of its subscription and free streaming channels, as well as creating new ones.

The company reported a big increase in streaming revenue during its most recent quarter.

Also Read: HBO and Dish End 3-Year-Old Carriage Battle

When Dish reported its results for the first quarter in April, it said Sling had 2.37 million subscribers, down 100,000.

Sling TV sent an email to its subscribers Monday letting them know that starting in August 26, all customers will pay $35 a month for the virtual MVPD company's "Blue" and "Orange" service tiers. 

In January, the Dish Network-owned live streaming service upped the price new users pay from $30 a month to $35. Now, legacy users will experience the same price bump. 

Sling TV users who signed up before August 1, 2020 were protected by the streaming company's one-year price guarantee decreed last summer, which promised not to up their monthly rate. 

According to a Sling TV rep we exchanged email with Monday afternoon, the price guarantee is now expiring. 

In its email to customers, the pay TV company blamed the usual suspects--program networks--for the price bump. 

"SLING fights hard to keep your price low but programmers continue to charge us more for the content we deliver to you," the email said. 

Sling TV remains the cheapest among the larges vMVPDs, with market leaders Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV both base priced at $65 a month. 

Like all vMVPDs, however, Sling TV has experienced a steady price progression. As recently as June 2018, the service was priced at $20 a month. 

After launching its overhauled UX in beta on Amazon Fire TV devices in May, Sling TV has now begun deploying the much needed product upgrade on Roku boxes. 

Starting Wednesday, the revised user experience is available on Roku's high-end "Ultra" devices. 

The upgrade represents a radical revision of the original Sling TV UX, which launched with the virtual MVPD service back in February 2015. The new user experience includes new everything--factoring in is a revised home screen, rethought-out navigation and program guide, and a redesigned DVR, as well as improved search and navigation features. Sling TV summarizes the changes in this YouTube video:

Sling TV said the upgrade will roll out on other Roku hardware, as well as other connected TV platforms--including Dish's own AirTV boxes and dongles--later this year. 

As mentioned, it's a much needed upgrade. Complaints about the Sling TV app have dogged the vMVPD service since the beginning. Despite being the cheapest virtual pay TV offering, Sling TV has steadily slipped behind Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV in subscriber growth, flatlining in recent quarters at just under 2.4 million customers. 

App downloads of the major virtual MVPDs were up 63% in June, most likely driven by heavy sports content and the run up to the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, according to a report by Evercore ISI media analyst Vijay Jayant.

YouTube TV again accounted for the largest slice of overall vMVPD downloads -- 44% -- but it was sports-centric FuboTV that had the biggest year-over-year gain in the segment --312%, according to Jayant. FuboTV was a close second to YouTube TV in terms of download share (33%), followed by Sling TV (18%) and AT&T TV (9%).

“Virtual MVPD app download trends improved vs. the prior few months likely driven by the strong sports calendar and lead into the Olympics,” Jayant wrote in his report, adding that May downloads rose 11% year-over-year, driven by FuboTV and YouTube TV. 

Also Read: Fubo TV CEO David Gandler Says VMVPDs Are Pay TV's Future Gateway 

“Similar to trends in prior months, YouTube continues to dominate in terms of vMVPD download market share followed by fuboTV, SlingTV, and AT&T TV,” Jayant wrote. 

June was a big TV sports month ratings-wise with the NBA Playoffs,  Major League Baseball, the U.S. Olympic Trials, the NCAA baseball tournament and UEFA European Championship all attracting strong ratings. 

The Summer Olympic Games are scheduled for July 23-Aug. 8 in Tokyo and NBCUniversal plans to air about 7,000 hours of content on its broadcast and cable networks as well as digital platforms including Peacock and Telemundo Deportes. 

For SVOD providers, the month was mixed. Netflix app downloads were down about 25% year-over-year, a slight improvement over May’s 30% decline. Showtime (up 132%), Disney Plus (up 114%) and HBO Max (up 63%) were the top performers in the sector, while Hulu rose 4% and Amazon Prime Video increased 1% in the period.

HBO Max, according to Jayant, dominated the SVOD space with strong releases of originals and library content in June. Its June 29 expansion into 39 Latin American and Caribbean countries should help drive downloads in July, he said. 

Newer entrants Discovery Plus (launched Jan. 4) and Paramount Plus (launched on March 4) were not included in year-over-year estimates. But Jayant wrote that month-over-month trends at Discovery Plus have been marginally weaker, with June 2021 downloads at about 1.2 million, fewer than the 1.5 million downloads in May. Paramount Plus’s ad-supported tiered launch June 7 helped push total downloads to 2.3 million in June, up from 1.4 million in May. 

Disney Plus was driven mainly by gains in Latin America, ahead of its planned August launch of the Star Plus general entertainment streaming service and a new promotion that will give new Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers Disney Plus for six months free. Existing Amazon Music Unlimited customers can get Disney Plus for free for three months. 

On the ad-supported side, Jayant estimated that app downloads were up 48% year-over-year in June, fueled by gains at Tubi TV (up 49%). Trends for Pluto TV were down about 3% for the month, but the ViacomCBS-owned streamer still holds the biggest share of download activity at 38%, according to Jayant. NBC Universal’s Peacock launched in April 2020, so year-over-year comps were not shown, but Jayant wrote the service has a 26% share of download activity, close behind Pluto. 

After admittedly “stumbling” with the execution of the Sling TV user experience since the platform launched back in 2015, Dish Network is working quickly to catch up. 

In the latest signal of progress, Dish said Tuesday that Sling TV is now natively integrated into Google TV, and new search-and-recommendation overlay to the Android TV operating system.

Starting this week, users of Google TV devices, who subscribe to Sling TV and have linked the Sling TV app to their Google account, will see a new “Live” tab emerge on the top-line menu of their home screen, to the right of the “For You” tab.

This Live tab, which was previously only available to YouTube TV subscribers,  will now also let users access their Sling TV programming without going into the app. Under the new configuration, Sling TV programming will also show up in the recommendations surfaced under the “For You” tab.

Notable: Our Sling TV app was already linked to our Google account. Our Chromecast with Google TV device is up to date, and we rebooted it, but the “Live” tab and Sling TV integration never surfaced. A number of tech bloggers have kicked the tires on Sling TV’s announced integration into Google TV already and found it work just fine. 

Perhaps the update hasn't arrived for us yet?

“The integration is rolling out to Google TV devices throughout the next week. As the rollout just launched, it is currently only available on select devices. But you should see the integration on your device within the next several days,” a Sling TV rep told us. 

It’s unclear how widely adopted Google TV is, having debuted last October with the introduction of Google's latest Chromecast device. In terms of third-party tech, Nvidia and Xiaomi have integrated the Google TV overlay into certain Android TV-based streaming players, and Sony and TCL have put into their Android TV-powered smart TV products. 

Google has plans over the next few years go migrate the broader installed base of third-party Android TV gadgets to Google TV. And with Walmart now selling its own line of Android TV connected TV players, that installed base is growing. 

As for Sling TV, its notoriously clunky app is often faulted for undermining the business potential of the Sling platform, which was the first vMVPD to launch back in February 2015. 

Sling TV is now the No. 3 ranked vMVPD behind Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV. Finishing the first quarter with 2.374 million subscribers, its growth has mostly stagnated over the past three years. 

In fact, in a ranking of streaming services published today by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, Sling TV placed near the bottom. 

However, a technology refresh is afoot, with Sling TV debuting in bet last month a reimagined app for Amazon Fire TV. 

After admitting that the quality of its user experience is subpar earlier this year, Sling TV is rolling out what it says are major OS/UX improvements, starting with its Amazon Fire TV app.

“After a year of talking to customers and working with our design and advanced engineering teams, we're happy to roll out the new Sling TV app to deliver the best in live sports, news and entertainment, at the same unbeatable low price point," said Michael Schwimmer, group president of Sling TV, in a statement issued Tuesday

Sling TV said that the beta version of its now app has now launched on Amazon Fire TV.

A new home screen now includes a "powerful" recommendation engine that "spotlights the perfect movies and shows chosen specifically for the user." 

A "reimagined" program guide will keep the familiar look at feel, but will allow users to sort the guide and make their favorite channels easier to get to. 

A new DVR tab, meanwhile, will make it easier to access the more than 50 hours of free storage, as well as the 200 hours available to those paying $5 a month. 

Sling TV is also promising much-needed improvements for search and navigation features. 

"When we began the process of reimagining the app, we started with the customer. After immense testing and direct feedback across our customer base, we've developed a design that gives the user an effortless experience," addedJon Lin, VP of product for Sling TV.

Sling TV and its parent, Dish Network, have not revealed when the operating system upgrade will reach the Fire TV platform ... or other connected TV device systems.

In February, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen conceded that Sling TV “should have more market share” among virtual pay TV providers, given that has been in the market the longest, launching six years earlier.

“We stumbled a little there with the quality of the user experience,” Ergen said. “Our network was the best and the first, but we got a little complacent.”

Sling TV reported the loss of 100,000 customers in the first quarter, finishing the first three months of the year with 2.374 million subscribers--less than 200,000 more than it reported in 2018.

Besides tweaking its app, Sling TV is responding to the slow growth with an aggressive Verizon promotion, offering two months free of its virtual pay TV service to new and existing Verizon wireless customers.

Notably, buried at the bottom of Tuesday's press release, Sling TV announced yet another new promo--new and returning customers can get Sling TV Orange or Blue tiers plus the 200-hour cloud DVR for $10 for the first month.