Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen late last week made the rounds at the FCC. In a Feb. 2 meeting with FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, Ergen criticized one of her key pay TV initiatives: Making cable and satellite TV operators provide consumers rebates as compensation for lost programming during contract disputes.
The company, led by chair Charlie Ergen and CEO Hamid Akhavan, said its goal is to “further unlock incremental strategic, financial and operating flexibility for its business” following the completion of its merger with Dish Network.
Charlie Ergen is nearing a deal to merge his major holdings, Dish Network and EchoStar, a move aimed at giving him the financial flexibility to build a nationwide wireless network strong enough to take on the likes of AT&T and Verizon. A deal could be announced as soon as Tuesday, barring any last-minute snags, according to people familiar with the matter.
“The next step for retrans is down, not up,” the Dish chairman says while drawing his typically hard line amid a protracted impasse with Cox Media Group.
The 20-year merger dalliance between satellite TV companies DirecTV and Dish Network has a window to finally consummate following completion of the 2022 midterm election cycle next week, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen told equity analysts and business journalist Wednesday during his company’s 3Q earnings call.
Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen has once again weighed in a potential satellite TV merger between Dish and DirecTV. During Thursday’s 4Q earnings call, Ergen again called a Dish-DirecTV combo “inevitable” while painting a dire picture for satellite TV if the two companies don’t merge.
Exclusives
Ongoing carriage friction between Dish Network and Sinclair Broadcast Group could soon intensify, with Sinclair warning that 112 of its local TV stations could soon go dark on the pay-TV provider. In an earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen was asked about the source of the dispute with Sinclair. “At the end of the day, it’s about money,” he said. “It’s about economics.”
“Our vendors are competing with us in linear TV, so that’s an unhealthy place.” That’s the assessment of Dish founder Charlie Ergen. In Thursday’s earnings call, Ergen played prophet and skeptic as he laid out the competitive landscape. The company’s Dish TV and Sling TV units rely almost exclusively on the appetite for live streaming. But as nearly every media company launches its own services, these MVPDs are facing increasing competition for limited streaming dollars.
Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen, long one of the lowest paid CEOs in the media industry, broke that mold Friday after the satellite giant revealed the executive received his biggest payday yet, $94.8 million, fueled mainly by one-time stock options, according to its annual proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
With his company’s vMVPD reporting just 16,000 customer additions in the fourth quarter, the Dish chairman concedes the service should have more market share than it does.
The FCC ruled unanimously Tuesday night that Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen improperly bid on $12 billion worth of wireless spectrum back in 2015, and received a $3-plus billion discount through a government program designed to benefit small businesses. Ergen bid on the spectrum not through Dish Network, a massive satellite and soon-to-be 5G carrier, but through an outfit known as Northstar Wireless, which he has a stake in.
A deal will happen, ‘whether it’s a year from now or 10 years from now,’ he says.
Combining the two fading satellite TV operations isn’t a matter of if but only when, Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen says.
Ergen Has A Big Appetite For 5G Spectrum
As part of Dish Network’s $1.4 billion agreement last week to purchase around 9 million Boost-branded mobile customers from T-Mobile, the company also quietly said it would purchase billions of dollars of additional spectrum. The deal underscores the fact that Charlie Ergen — the chairman of Dish Network and a key architect of the company’s 5G strategy — ostensibly has an utterly inexhaustible desire for spectrum.
Charlie Ergen, the billionaire chairman and former CEO of Dish Network, took home $2.35 million in total pay for 2019, according to an SEC proxy filing issued on Friday. Ergen made $3.1 million for running the satellite TV service in 2018.
Dish’s Charlie Ergen said he has letters from three banks prepared to offer $10 billion to fund the company’s new wireless network as he appeared in federal court to testify in support of T-Mobile US’s purchase of rival Sprint.
Dish Network’s chances of buying DirecTV could be about as remote as a satellite that’s orbiting the earth. That’s the take from sources close to Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, who say that in addition to regulatory stumbling blocks, the mercurial billionaire faces tough financial hurdles in acquiring his longtime rival.
Jessell | The Ergen-Locast Link And Other Vital Matters
A smorgasbord of topics this week: (1) I don’t know it for a fact, but I know that it’s true that Charlie Ergen is the money behind Locast, the OTT service that is streaming local broadcast signals. (2) Retrans is also under attack from STELAR, the law that empowers satellite operators to import distant signals of network O&Os into areas where subscribers cannot receive local affiliates off air and is up for renewal. (3) With the emergence of the new Fox Corp. this week, a forecast finds that most of its broadcast fee growth will come from reverse comp. (4) A tip of the hat to FCC Comish Michael O’Rielly for taking on the Justice Department, which has been stepping on the FCC’s turf regarding local TV ownership rules.
Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen, long known for his free-spoken, sharp-elbowed management style, described the company’s carriage dispute with HBO as the result of “purely an anti-competitive play” by the premium network’s new parent, AT&T.
Dish Network’s Charlie Ergen continues to beat the 5G drum, telling an investor conference that the company could spend up to $10 billion to build 50,000 towers in its efforts to launch a 5G network.
Charlie Ergen, the billionaire chairman and former CEO of Dish Network, was awarded $2.4 million for running the satellite TV service in 2017, up 41%, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday. The drivers were stock option and stock awards of $654,033 and $6,389, respectively, compared with none in 2016, and an increase in “other compensation” to $786,021 from $656,833. Ergen’s salary remained unchanged at $1 million.
Last Week’s Satellite News: AT&T And Ergen
There is simply no way to view the comments by a federal judge last week that he will not issue his decision in the lawsuit filed by the government to block AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner until after April 22 as anything but bad news for the telco behemoth. Also, the consumer media and some in the financial press went bonkers last week when Dish Network announced that Chairman Charlie Ergen was once again giving up the chief executive title. It was hilarious. If Ergen was really interested in turning over the reins to someone else, he would have recruited a big name chief executive to take over.
Ergen And Smith: Thing 1 And Thing 2
What do the two TV entrepreneurs have in common? They are both betting that the future lies in spectrum and the Internet of Things. They just envision different ways of realizing the vast potential. The real question is can they get a return on the hefty investments they will have to make so that they can compete is the space.
Charlie Ergen is stepping down as Dish CEO, relinquishing the company’s top executive position to President-CEO Erik Carlson. Ergen, who handed that “president” title over to Carlson in 2015, will now focus his efforts on the wireless business going forward.
Ergen, Dish On Dangerous Legal Trajectory
Week after week, month after month, year after year, it is hard to remember a time during which Dish Network was not participating in a high-profile lawsuit or legal dispute. And when two individual federal judges, in separate cases, question whether a company remotely cares if it is violating the law — any law — it is far more than business as usual. Could it be that a reputation for not caring about the law, or the rules, or core corporate ethics has enveloped Dish Network and is catching up to it?
Dish’s Ergen On Road To Who Knows Where
Most know Dish Network for its satellite dishes affixed to the exteriors of millions of U.S. homes. But the $30 billion company is betting its future on something investors can’t see: licenses for airwaves used to transmit data between smartphones and other wireless-connected devices. The strategy sounds good in theory: For better or worse, our days do increasingly revolve around smart devices. However, Charlie Ergen, Dish’s billionaire founder and leader, has yet to provide a clear plan for how exactly the pay-TV company will make money from all the spectrum licenses it’s purchased over the years.
Post Auction, Ergen Wireless Bet Now $21B
Counting the $6.2 billion of spectrum he bought in the incentive auction, Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen has now shelled out more than $21 billion for spectrum. With sale and partnership possibilities limited, he may forge ahead alone with plans to provide the backbone for the so-called internet of things.This column originally appeared as the “Scherman’s Notebook” column in the March 1 Satellite Business News.
Did Charlie Ergen Make A Bad Wireless Bet?
Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen once promised that he would meet all the broadband needs of consumers with the billions of dollars of wireless spectrum he was accumulating. Five years later, Dish Network has a contract to repair Samsung’s exploding washing machines, but no articulated plan for putting all that spectrum to work. This column originally appeared as the “Scherman’s Notebook” column in the March 1 Satellite Business News FaxUPDATE.
Dish Chairman-CEO made a rhetorical pivot by billing virtual MVPD services like Sling TV as replacements for traditional pay-TV platforms and not merely competition. Ergen’s comments exist in direct opposition from Dish’s brand position on products like Sling TV, dating back more than two years.
Providers of streaming services such as DirecTV Now and Sling TV typically try to calm the fears of programmers that like the lucrative traditional pay TV bundle by saying that they aim to supplement, not replace, it. But Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen doesn’t buy that anymore.
Entering the second month of a blackout that has kept 42 Tribune-owned network affiliates in 33 markets off Dish Network, Charlie Ergen, chairman and CEO of the satellite TV service, said his company is “tens of millions of dollars apart” with the broadcaster, and didn’t sound hopeful about one of the largest ever retrans-related blackouts ending soon.
Dish CEO Charlie Ergen said his company was prepared to drop Viacom channels permanently if the satellite provider can’t reach a deal on fees with the programmer. “We’re prepared to move on as Suddenlink and others have done without the content,” he said, speaking on a call with analysts to discuss quarterly results.
Ergen: Retrans Rules A Threat To Consumers
The FCC’s newly approved rules aimed at unlocking the pay-TV set-top box business have been getting a lot of attention. But Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen said retrans rules, which are currently being considered for revision by the FCC, are more pertinent to consumers.
Charlie Ergen is giving up his president title at Dish Network, which will go to Erik Carlson. Carlson will supervise all Dish revenue-generating, operating and administrative units, including customer acquisition and retention, finance and accounting, human resources, marketing, media sales, programming, operations and Dish’s newly formed technology office.
Dish Network Corp. is in talks to merge with T-Mobile US Inc., people familiar with the matter said, a deal that would accelerate a wave of consolidation across the U.S. media and communications industries. The two sides are in close agreement about what the combined company would look like, with Dish CEO Charlie Ergen becoming the company’s chairman and his T-Mobile counterpart, John Legere, serving as the combined company’s CEO, the people said.
Charlie Ergen, the brash entrepreneurial founder of Dish Network, will take over as CEO of the satcaster following the retirement of president and CEO Joe Clayton in March. Dish announced Monday that Clayton, who has been its chief exec since June 2011, will retire from his position effective March 31 and will also leave Dish’s board.
Charlie Ergen is using a new Web-entertainment service and $50 billion in airwaves to upend pay TV as we know it. The founder of Dish Network Corp. beat his rivals to market in February with Sling TV, a $20-a-month online service that offers live channels and sports at a fourth of the cost of a typical cable bundle. Including the latest government sale of wireless airwaves, Ergen has also amassed a $50 billion trove of spectrum that could let Englewood, Colo.-based Dish compete for data and voice customers for the first time.
‘Bully-Boy Tactics’ From Dish Net’s Ergen
Dish has joined two other pay-TV companies, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV, to form the American Television Alliance. ATVA’s strategy, led by the big three, is simple — to manufacture as many TV blackouts of both cable networks and local broadcast stations as possible in hopes that Congress will “reform” a system that ATVA’s members have deliberately tried to break.
