Dish Network swung to a loss in the third quarter as it shedded 64,000 pay-TV subscribers.

The loss was a surprise to Wall Street. Dish also missed on analysts’ revenue estimates. By the end of the day, Dish stock lost nearly 40% of its value, closing at $3.44 a share.

Dish finished the quarter with 8.84 million pay TV subscribers, down from 8.904 million at the end of the second quarter and 10.02 million a year ago.

Dish satellite subscribers fell to 6.72 million from 6.901 million at the end of the second quarter and 7.607 million a year ago.

Sling TV streaming subscribers rose to 2.12 million from 2.003 million in the second quarter, but down from 2.411 million a year ago.

Dish’s third-quarter loss was $139 million, or 26 cents a share, compared to net income of $412 million or 65 cents a share.

Revenue fell 9.8% to $3.7 billion. 

Cinedigm said that three more of its streaming channels have been launched on Sling TV’s Freestream platform.

With the addition of Midnight Pulp, The Country Network and AsianCrush, more than a dozen Cinedigm channels are now on Sling.

“We are thrilled to add ​three​ of our top-performing FAST channels, Midnight Pulp, The Country Network and AsianCrush, to Sling ​Freestream’​s lineup,” said Jennifer Soltesz, VP, Business Development & Strategy at Cinedigm. “Our extensive portfolio complements S​LING’s​​    ​ wide array of channel offerings. The depth of our catalog is sure to excite consumers and we know advertisers will respond to Cinedigm’s diverse channel offerings on this innovative streaming platform.” 

Also Read: With Shares Languishing, Cinedigm Sets Stock Buyback, Rebranding

Previously added to Sling Freestream have been Cinedigms’s Screambox TV, The Bob Ross Channel, RetroCrush, Comedy Dynamics, Reamadrid TV, So…REad and Docurama

Sling Freestream has more than 240 channels. ■

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also Read: Jukin Streaming Weather Network for Young Viewers

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

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

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

Dish Network’s first-quarter net income and revenue rose despite the loss of about 230,000 pay-TV subscribers.

Dish said the drop in subscribers was smaller than the 413,000 that departed a year ago. The company now has 11.06 million pay-TV subscribers, between satellite TV and OTT.

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

Dish TV fell by 130,000 to 8.69 million subscribers in the first quarter from 8.82 million at the end of the year. Sling TV also lost 100,000 subscribers in the period, ending the quarter with 2.37 million subscribers.

Also Read: Sinclair RSNs Face 'Tumultuous’ Period, Analyst Says

A year ago, the company had 11.32 million pay TV customers, with 9.01 million subscribing to Dish TV and 2.31 million on OTT outlet Sling TV.

Also Read: Magnite Says Sling TV Saw Programmatic Growth in 2020

First quarter net income was $630 million, or 99 cents a share, compared to $73 million, or 13 cents a year a year ago.

Revenue rose to $4.50 billion from $3.22 billion.

Dish also said retail wireless net subscribers dropped by 151,000 to 8.89 million.

Comscore said it reached an expanded agreement with Dish Media that expands the data it received from Dish to include its Sling TV virtual multichannel video programming distributor.

Comscore said the agreement increases its ability to measure across platforms and provide independent measurement of addressable advertising across the Dish and Sling TV footprints.

“Comscore’s new partnership with Dish Media continues our company’s significant steps in our transformation of television and cross-platform measurement of linear and OTT, as we have built the largest viewing dataset of second-by-second viewership data that is aggregated across all premium video providers from the device, to the household, to zip code, to the market and to the nation,” said Comscore CEO Bill Livek.

Comscore has been measuring Dish Media’s addressable advertising since it launched in 2012. Since January 2018, Comscore has measured cross-platform addressable impressions across OTT, mobile, desktop, and traditional TV for both Dish and Sling TV.

“A recent study from Forrester Consulting told us the lack of measurement frameworks for addressable is a major challenge for media buyers, and our continued partnership with Comscore will help break down those barriers,” said Kevin Arrix, senior VP at Dish Media. “With the addition of live OTT viewership data from Sling TV and the other new capabilities, we are enhancing measurement and setting up addressable, whether transacted with Dish or programmers, for long-term success in the marketplace, all while safeguarding consumer privacy.”

Magnite and Dish Media said that Sling TV generated an increase in programmatic spending via the Magnite platform in 2020.

Magnite said marketers used more addressable campaigns and took advantage of live viewership on over-the-top and connected TV platforms.

“In what has been a challenging year for most, we’re fortunate to have been able to identify opportunities in the market and deliver results for one of our most valuable partners," commented Chris Signore, VP of publisher partnerships at Magnite. "With Magnite’s built-for-video tech stack, which is capable of supporting addressable and live CTV, we were able to help Sling TV earn the full value of their premium inventory and audience data.” 

Magnite and Dish Media have worked together for five years to make buying live TV inventory via programmatic technology simpler and more accessible.

“Magnite has made significant strides to streamline the programmatic buying experience for CTV platforms like Sling TV, unlocking new opportunities for both publishers and buyers,” said Dave Antonelli, director of Sling TV sales at Dish Media. “We look forward to continuing to innovate with Magnite to make a meaningful impact on the growing CTV marketplace.”

While Dish Network’s core satellite-TV business is once again experiencing accelerated declines, it can no longer count on Sling TV as a buffer for its subscriber metrics.

Dish’s nearly four-year-old virtual multichannel video programming distributor added just 26,000 customers in Q3. The operator wasn’t yet breaking out Sling subscriber metrics last November, but estimates were that it gained around 240,000 Sling TV users in Q3 2017.

The just-finished third quarter is thought to be Sling TV’s slowest since it launched in Q1 2015, alongside Sony PlayStation Vue.

“I think one of the phenomenons you’re seeing is — I don’t think that [the] OTT business is slowing down,” chairman Charlie Ergen said during Dish’s Q3 earnings call. “I think it’s probably accelerating [overall]. But you’re seeing a lot more players in the marketplace than just Dish and Sony, now with DirecTV and now with YouTube and others and Hulu.”

Some deceleration for Sling TV undoubtedly came from a $5 monthly price increase applied to the vMVPD’s base Orange tier during the quarter — an effect Dish expects to continue through Q4.

But the vMVPD sector, led by Sling TV and its 2.37 million subscribers, does seem to be cooling overall. The runner-up in the category, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, added just 49,000 users in Q3 after growing by 342,000 customers in the second quarter. (DirecTV Now added 296,000 users in the third quarter of 2017.) That platform’s deceleration came as AT&T ended a number of sign-up promotions.

Having introduced itself all the way back in January 2016 at CES, at a time when the virtual MVPD market was at its infancy, Atlanta-based OTT start-up Vidgo has finally announced pricing and packaging for its live-streamed service.

The company has identified a niche in the Latino market, and is offering three vaguely sketched out product tiers for its vMVPD: the $19.99-a-month “Latino” bundle with “20 channels of the most popular Spanish entertainment and sports channels from Latin America”; the $29.99 Latino Mas package with “30 channels from the USA, Central and South America, and Spain”; and the $39.99 Core tier, which has few details.

Vidgo CEO Shane Cannon told Light Reading that his company will offer a slate of live and VOD programming consisting of both local broadcast and cable channels, with cloud DVR. The service will be playable, he said, on iOS and Android mobile devices, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.

Vidgo hasn’t announced a launch date, but tweeted back on Sept. 1, “Internal Beta underway in preparation for launch.”

Truly, this startup has walked a long road.

In April, Vidgo Cannon touched on the company’s target market while announcing a deal with Harmonic to use the vendor’s VOS media processing platform.

“We’ve identified a significant underserved market in the United States, with millions of consumers that are currently not part of the pay TV ecosystem,” Cannon said.

Vidgo’s Crunchbase profile lists the company being founded in 2017 and receiving $500,000 in private funding to date.

However, at CES 2016, company cofounder Robert Kostensky, a former DirecTV sales and and distribution executive, told reporters that he and another unnamed cofounder had been developing the start-up for the previous seven years, and that Vidgo was preparing to launch in 15 cities.

"We're just dotting the I's and crossing the T's," Kostenky said at the time. Kostenksy is now working for Atlanta-based consulting firm Last Mile Inc., according to his LinkedIn profile, having departed Vidgo in August 2017.

At the time, the only vMVPDs in the market were Dish Network’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue. The virtual pay TV market, however, now has nearly a dozen participants.

Cannon, meanwhile, is a former AT&T wireless executive who is listed on LinkedIn as having joined Vidgo in 2015 as chief marketing officer. He was named CEO in January. 

Beginning tomorrow (Aug. 29) Sling TV is launching a free preview of Pac-12 Network to customers that subscribe to its Sling Orange and Sling Blue packages.

During the free preview – which will run from Aug. 29 to Sept. 17 – customers will be able to see all six Pac 12 networks – Pac 12 Arizona, Pac-12 Bay Area, Pac-12 Los Angeles; Pac-12 Mountain; Pac-12 Oregon; and Pac-12 Washington for no additional cost.

Sling TV also offers Pac 12 without regional restrictions, so customers can watch any team no matter where they live. Scheduled games for this weekend include:

• Weber State v. Utah (Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. ET)

• UNLV v. USC (Sept. 1 at 4 p.m. ET)

• Bowling Green v. Oregon (Sept. 1 at 8 p.m. ET)

Once the free preview ends on Sept. 17, customers can add Pac-12 Networks by subscribing to Sports Extra, for $5 per month for Sling Orange customers or $10 per month for Sling Blue customers. For more information on the free preview of Pac-12 Networks on Sling TV, visit here. 

Although it launched a full 22 months later, AT&T’s DirecTV Now virtual pay TV platform is on a pace to surpass the first virtual pay TV platform to market, Sling TV.

Launching in February 2015, Dish’s Network’s Sling TV has amassed an industry-leading 2.444 million customers. But the virtual pay TV platform just had its slowest quarter since Dish began breaking out its subscriber performance to date—or at least since in the middle of 2017, when Dish began breaking out Sling TV numbers—adding just 41,000 users.

Related: Moffett: Cord-Cutting Slowing Down

In the first quarter, Sling TV reported additions of 91,000 users. In the second quarter of 2017, research group MoffettNathanson said it tallied Sling TV’s gains at around 120,000.

Meanwhile, DirecTV Now added 342,000 users in the second quarter, bringing its total to 1.81 million. AT&T reported DirecTV Now growth of 152,000 in the second quarter of 2017. 

AT&T is aggressively driving this growth with promotions. As TV answerman blogger Phil Swann reported yesterday, the company is still offering new customers a $10-a-month price for their first three months of service. 

Of course, if the two vMVPDs maintained their current trajectories, DirecTV Now would pass Sling as the industry leader before the end of 2018.

With Wall Street analysts now fixated on what Dish does with its wireless spectrum, there is little interest these days in what happens to legacy operations like Sling TV.

“While this deceleration will likely get a fair amount of attention—Sling was once hailed as Dish’s pay TV future—it simply isn’t very important for the longer term,” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said.

Related: Sling TV Enlists ‘Sexpert’ Dr. Ruth in Promo Spots

For its part, Dish still claims Sling TV will have an important role in its 5G future, and that development of advanced advertising will improve the platforms profitability going forward.

“And so sure, I mean there has been a little bit of a slowdown in growth but we think we’re well-positioned and well poised,” said Sling TV president Warren Schlichting during Dish’s Q2 earnings report last week.

Sling TV said Thursday that it is allowing ex-customers to buy certain channels on an a la carte basis without a base subscription, in concert with a new pricing structure aimed at giving customers more flexibility.

While its 30-channel Sling Orange package, which includes Disney Channel and ESPN, will rise 25% ($5) to $25 per month, the OTT service will allow ex-customers to buy certain channels on an individual basis without a monthly subscription through their Roku devices. Sling said it expects to expand the offering to additional Sling-supported devices in the future. While it is far from full a la carte – only a handful of channels are available on a standalone basis – it is a start.

According to Sling TV, former customers who reopen their Sling TV app can purchase premium channel Showtime for $10 per month, newly launched Stingray Karaoke ($7), Dove Channel ($5), Outside TV Features ($5), Curiosity Stream ($6), Pantaya ($6), Up Faith & Family ($5) and NBA League Pass ($28.99).

About 100 hours of free on-demand content from TBS, HGTV, History and other networks are also available. Available shows include Wrecked, The Detour, Good Behavior and Flip or Flop.

Users also can access individual pay-per-view events and movies without a monthly subscription to the service. The company said it plans to add new features and more content in the near future.

In a blog post Thursday, Sling TV announced it would raise the price of its Sling Orange 30-channel package by $5 to $25 per month. Pricing for the combined Sling Orange and Sling Blue packages remains unchanged at $40 per month.

"When we first launched Sling in 2015, we set out to create an entertainment experience that put our customers first, offering unprecedented flexibility and control – no annual contracts, no hidden fees and the ability to customize programming," Sling TV president Warren Schlichting said in a statement. "The new Sling evolves the experience even further by providing access to great content without anchoring customers to a base subscription."

Dish Network disclosed Sling TV customers for the first time Wednesday, with the over-the-top pioneer ending 2017 with 2.2 million customers.

It was the first time since the 2015 launch of the service that Dish has disclosed its customer count. At the same time Dish said its satellite TV service ended the year with 11.03 million customers.

Other OTT services have started to reveal subscriber numbers in recent weeks. HBO said its standalone HBO Now and other OTT services have about 5 million customers, while CBS said that its CBS All Access and Showtime over-the-top offerings have a combined 5 million customers and are on track to reach 8 million by 2020.

The Sling TV numbers come as Dish reported a less than stellar fourth quarter, with revenue down 7.2% to $3.48 billion from $3.75 billion in the previous year. Net income was up sharply to $1.39 billion, from $355 million in the prior year, entirely due to a $1.2 billion tax break resulting from recent tax reform measures. 

Overall, net pay-TV subscribers increased by about 39,000 in the fourth quarter, which includes 75,000 reactivations in Puerto Rico and the U.S.Virgin Islands following the extraordinary devastation of Hurricane Maria. The gain is compared to net additions of 28,000 in the year-ago quarter.

For the year, revenue was down 5.4% to $14.39 billion, compared to $15.21 billion in 2016. Net income rose to $2.1 billion, versus $1.5 billion in 2016, and mostly due to tax reform.

Comcast’s NBC Universal is declining to air a series of advertisements from Dish Networks’ Sling TV over-the-top service, a practice the satellite company claims is proof that the service is touching a nerve with operators.

An NBCU spokesperson confirmed that its owned and operated stations in New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have declined to air the spots, but would not comment further.

In a blog posting, Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch said Sling TV ads are running across owned & operated stations and affiliates of ABC, CBS, and Fox, as well as independently owned NBC affiliates.

The ads are part of SlingTV’s new ad campaign, dubbed “Take Back TV,” which was launched on July 20. The company has aired three spots targeted at millennials where the pay-TV provider is depicted by a series of kid bullies who force customers to sign long term contracts, pay for channels they don’t watch and offer poor customer service. 

It should be noted that while the spots have shown up on ABC, CBS and Fox, those three networks don’t own distribution and therefore don’t compete with Sling TV. Comcast in contrast, owns the largest cable operator in the country with about 22.4 million customers. Other media companies have refused to carry ads from competitors in the past – in 2007 News Corp. pulled ads by business cable network CNBC from the websites of the Wall Street Journal after the company launched a rival business channel, Fox Business Network.

At the time, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said pulling the ads was well within its rights – its channels didn’t run ads for ABC, NBC or CBS either – but said it could have been perceived as “heavy handed.”

Fox has since split its programming and print operations in two, with its publishing unit housed in News Corp., and its broadcast, cable network and movie studio properties in 21st Century Fox. 

Sling’s Lynch sees Comcast’s refusal to air the ads is proof of the central premise of the ads – that traditional pay-TV players “don’t get it.”

In his blog, Lynch said it is the fact that traditional pay-TV providers don’t understand that innovation benefits customers.  

“Sling TV exists because we recognize the need for a new live TV model that is simple,” Lynch said. “Many of us are tired of long-term contracts, expensive programming bundles, high prices and poor customer service. Instead, we want TV on our terms. To come and go as we like. To watch great content, including sports, on the devices we own and use. And perhaps most importantly, we want rational pricing. This is what our new commercials call out. This is what Comcast doesn’t want you to see.”

Comcast could argue that the whole TV when you want it, where you want it and on whatever device you want it on, could be answered in part by its and other cable operators’ TV Everywhere initiative. Even satellite companies have embraced the authenticated approach to watching outside of the living room. But the rollout of TV Everywhere has been slower than expected and it only comes with a traditional pay-TV subscription. Sling TV, launched in February, includes about 20 core networks (including ESPN) for $20 per month. The streaming service, which is available on just one device per subscription, also has other tiers of networks available by genre (like news & entertainment, movies and sports) for an additional $5 per month.