Dish Network

The FCC on Thursday handed WGBP Opelika, Ala., a victory in its attempt to maximize distribution by satellite TV provider Dish Network, which had claimed the station was trying to game the rules in a way that might encourage other stations to copy. Acting on the station’s must-carry complaint filed last December, the commission’s Media Bureau agreed with WGBP that it was legally entitled to far broader carriage than Dish was willing to grant.

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.

Mission Broadcasting and Dish Network said the reached a new multi-year distribution agreement, ending a year-long blackout that affected 27 TV stations in 25 markets. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Mission continues to be blacked out with DirecTV.

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.

CNZ Communications, owner of WGBP Opelika, Ala., claims that under FCC precedent, Dish needs to carry the station throughout the entire Atlanta, Ga., and Columbus, Ga., DMAs. CNZ filed a complaint with the FCC on Dec. 11 seeking full carriage in both markets. Yesterday, Dish asked the FCC to deny the complaint, saying it was “based on a misreading of the relevant statute, regulations, and FCC precedent.”

Dish Network Corp. and EchoStar Corp. have completed their merger, reuniting Charlie Ergen’s satellite empire once again. The deal, which closed on Dec. 31, is key to Ergen’s plan to transition Dish away from the dwindling pay TV business and toward wireless services, challenging the likes of Verizon Communications, T-Mobile and AT&T. Dish, which had accrued significant debt, will now have access to more cash and time to expand its 5G network buildout and mobile and broadband offerings, including fixed home wireless and Boost Infinite, a low-cost mobile service.

The Opelika, Ala., NBC LX Home affiliate owner, CNZ Communications, has turned to the FCC to resolve a carriage dispute with Dish Network. Satellite TV providers like Dish have a legal obligation to carry local TV signals, but CNZ Communications claims Dish has declined to carry the station in all areas where WGBP believes it deserves distribution. Dish, by contrast, says it has met its legal requirements.

Satellite TV broadcaster and terrestrial wireless operator Dish Network and EchoStar, its sister company focused on broadband services from space, have cleared a key regulatory hurdle in the way of their merger plans. The FCC gave its blessing Dec. 6 to transfer all of Dish Network’s licenses and authorizations to EchoStar, which would be the surviving entity following the transaction. The approval is one of the final conditions needed to complete a merger announced around four months ago.

Dish Network has named Hamid Akhavan as CEO and said he will continue as CEO of sister company EchoStar. EchoStar and Dish have agreed to merge. The transaction is still being reviewed by the government, but the company expects it to close by year-end.  Akhavan has been designated to be the CEO of the combined companies.

Dish Network announced Friday it reached a new carriage agreement with Hearst Television, and Hearst’s stations have been immediately restored on Dish. “We’re pleased to have reached a long-term agreement that benefits all parties and most importantly, our customers,” said Gary Schanman, executive vice president and group president, video services, Dish Network. “Thank you to our customers for your patience and understanding as we worked through the negotiations.”

Dish Network is cutting jobs as the company moves to reduce operational costs and expenses throughout the business. Dish has been restructuring the company since 2020, and this is not the first round of layoffs to have occurred since. Dish has laid off around 3,000 employees in recent years. The total number of the most recent cuts is unknown, but it is reportedly a major round of layoffs, with some employees claiming up to 20% of the staff was cut.

With its shares in free fall after a dismal third-quarter earnings report, Dish Network executives faced the music with Wall Street, conceding in an earnings call that they face an array of intensifying challenges. “We have a narrow path, but there is a path, to achieve financial stability and make sure we meet our commitments,” Chairman Charlie Ergen said. “Having been through this for a long time, we’ve had narrow paths before.”

Eight separate companies have been on the receiving end of patent lawsuits filed in federal court by pay TV provider Dish. The lawsuits were all filed within the past two months and share a common allegation: Dish believes the services are violating its patents that are connected to adaptive bitrate technology, which improves or decreases the video quality of an online stream based on a user’s connection speed and other factors.

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau says it has completed its investigation into Dish Network for failure to properly deorbit its EchoStar-7 satellite, accepting the company’s admission of liability and imposing a penalty of $150,000. This marks a first in space debris enforcement by the commission, which has stepped up its satellite policy efforts, including establishing the Space Bureau and implementing its Space Innovation Agenda.

Hearst is demanding “tens of millions of dollars” in broadcast retransmission rate increases, Dish claims.

Dish Network on Tuesday posted a sharply lower profit for the second quarter as its subscriber losses continued, though results still topped Wall Street expectations, and announced that it will recombine with satellite communications company EchoStar Corp. in an all-stock deal. Dish reported revenue of $3.91 billion, a 7% decline from the $4.21 billion in the second quarter of 2022, but above the $3.82 billion forecast by analysts polled by Zacks Investment Service.

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.

Charlie Ergen is looking to merge the two halves of his telecom empire, Dish and EchoStar, a deal that would tilt Dish away from a satellite TV business in decline. Both companies have engaged advisers to sort through what a deal might look like, people familiar with the matter say. A key issue: EchoStar is financially stronger than Dish, which is spending heavily to build out a nationwide mobile network while outrunning the cord-cutting that has gutted its core business.

Dish Network appears increasingly desperate to sell assets and raise money — and continues to battle speculation from insiders that it could face bankruptcy. The struggling satellite TV giant is expected to meet its commitment to cover 70% of the U.S. with a 5G wireless network by the end of the month, but sources are growing increasingly skeptical that Dish will have money to finish its buildout.

Dish Network is in talks to sell wireless plans for its nascent mobile phone service through Amazon, according to people familiar with the matter, an arrangement that could give the telecom company’s 5G rollout a critical lifeline. Details of the new phone plans sold through Amazon’s U.S. website could be announced as soon as June, the people said, though several factors could still delay or derail their launch.

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.

Players across the telecom industry are openly debating whether Dish Network will crash and burn. At issue is whether Dish Network and its chairman, Charlie Ergen, can successfully leverage the company’s aging satellite TV business to finance the construction of a nationwide 5G wireless network. And then, after that, if the company can successfully use that network to challenge behemoths like T-Mobile and AT&T.

Circle City Broadcasting filed papers appealing summary judgments dismissing its discrimination suits against DirecTV and Dish Network. Circle City is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to reverse a federal court judge’s decision to throw out the case without a trial and order the district court to hold a jury trial. DirecTV had no comment on the appeal.

A federal judge denied Dish Network’s motion seeking to have 17 words describing how much Dish was willing to pay Circle City to carry its Indianapolis television stations deleted from the court’s decision dismissing Circle City’s discrimination suit against Dish. Circle City claimed that after it acquired WISH and WNDY from Nexstar Media Group, Dish wanted to cut how much it paid for the stations retransmission rights because Circle City was a Black-owned media company, leading to a blackout of the stations.

A U.S. District Court Judge on Friday dismissed lawsuits brought by Circle City Broadcasting charging that DirecTV and Dish discriminated against Circle City because it was a Black-owned business. Circle City owner Dujuan McCoy said he planned to appeal the decision. He also said he would work to prevent DirecTV and Dish from merging.

The decision comes just 11 days after a Salt Lake City jury awarded parental-control tech maker ClearPlay nearly half a billion dollars over two technologies used in Dish’s AutoHop commercial-skipping feature.

Dish Network must pay $469 million for infringing two patents held by parental-control technology maker ClearPlay Inc. related to filtering material from streaming video, a jury in U.S. federal court in Utah has decided.

Dish Network is working to recover from a cyberattack that disrupted its internal servers and customer-service operations — and said the hack may have resulted in the theft of personal information. On Feb. 23, Dish execs announced on the operator’s earnings call that the company had experienced a network outage. After an investigation by cyber-security experts and outside advisers, Dish determined that the outage was due to “a cyber-security incident and notified appropriate law enforcement authorities,” the company disclosed in an SEC filing today.

“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.

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 4Q 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.

Dish Network subscribers have lost satellite access to stations owned by Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting because of a fee dispute. About 850,000 Dish households are affected. Mission has about 30 stations, including WPIX New York in the Dish footprint. Two White Knight stations are involved.

A U.S. District Court in Texas has found that the Super Arab IPTV streaming service pirated a number of channels from Dish Network, is liable for copyright infringement and has been directed to pay the satellite-TV provider $2.1 million. The court said Super Arab IPTV has to stop streaming any content from the Al Arabiya, Al Hayah 1, ART Cima, CBC, CBC Drama, Future TV, Hekayat, LBC, LBCI (aka LDC), and Melody Classic channels.

The NewsGuild-CWA and National Alliance of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians-CWA unions are using a retransmission consent impasse between Dish and Apollo Global Management’s Cox Media Group to argue to the FCC against the merger of Standard General and Tegna.

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

Dish says new subscribers for its “America’s Top” packages can lock in the price with a two-year commitment. It’s unclear as to whether the guarantee protects against spikes in taxes and surcharges, however.

Paducah Television, based in Providence, R.I., operates stations, in Lincoln, Neb.; Cape Girardeau, Mo.; and Providence, and doing business as Standard Media, said Dish refused offers from bit and was insisting on significant rate reductions.

Dish/Sling TV is raising the monthly price for its base live streaming services by $5 to cover rising programming costs, the company said. Sling Orange and Sling Blue will each now cost $40, Gary Schanman, group vice president for Sling TV, wrote in a blog post Thursday. A bundle that includes both will rise to $55.