Dish Boss Discusses Role of NFL, WGNA Blackouts in Record Subscriber Loss
Dish lost a ton of subscribers (281,000, to be exact) in the second quarter of 2016., and Chairman Charlie Ergen is trying to make sense of it all — or at least explain it away to the market.
Some of that record-breaking decline is simply cord-cutting, for sure. Another explanation could be a not-unpopular move away from satellite TV companies in general.
But then there’s a third reason: the current Dish blackouts of popular channels like the NFL Network, NFL RedZone, and Tribune Media’s WGN America.
“Subscriber-impact of any kind of takedown of popular channels is never positive,” Ergen began on a Thursday afternoon conference call. “Although the marketplace is getting a bit more fragmented … so it’s not as impactful as it may have been in the past.”
Also Read: Dish Suffers Worst Quarterly Subscriber Loss Ever
The two blackouts — like any unique business deals — are quite different from each other, as are their consequences.
The NFL side is less about money, Ergen claimed, and more about how the two companies can work together strategically. They had bigger figure it out soon — kickoff is a mere 49 days away.
Tribune, on the other hand, “is an honest disagreement on pricing,” Ergen said, admitting the two companies are “tens of millions of dollars apart.”
“We do hundreds of retrans[mission] deals, so we know where the marketplace is,” he added, “And we think that they’re out of line [with] where they’re trying to go.”
Also Read: NFL Network and NFL RedZone Dropped by Dish
That one may never come back, and neither will the subscribers who bailed out of network loyalty.
“If we ever get to a takedown situation, we have to be prepared that we will never put that channel back up again,” Ergen explained. “Anyone who wanted WGN America has probably left us.”
That said, he doesn’t believe that specific loss to be “a big number.”
And what’s done is done: “The value of putting WGN America back up is declining by the day,” he stated.
Also Read: 6 Most Outlandish Online Petitions, From Jesse Williams to Piers Morgan (Photos)
Dish had a rough Q2 in terms of subscriber-count, but the company actually bested Wall Street’s earnings estimates.
Read more about its three-month period that ended on June 30 here.
Recently, Dish and Viacom were able to come to an agreement that threatened a big blackout there.
Dish Suffers Worst Quarterly Subscriber Loss Ever
Jesse Jackson Compares DISH Tactics to Slavery in WGN-'Underground' Fight