Dish Network

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.

The Pac-12 Network has filed a civil lawsuit against satellite and streaming company Dish Network, claiming the pay television service withheld payment during the COVID-19 pandemic in violation of its carriage agreement. According to the lawsuit, Pac-12 Network says the agreement requires it to provide a certain number of college football games during a season. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pac-12 Network only aired one game; as a consequence, the network says it offered Dish a rebate because that year’s football season was shortened.

Any Slingboxes still out there are about to get bricked. Dish Network this week emailed reminders to users of Sling Media’s Slingbox — the once-controversial devices that “place-shift” pay TV services by streaming live TV over the internet — that the servers that power Slingboxes will be permanently taken offline on Nov. 9.

Good news for Dish/Sling TV customers ahead of Monday Night Football. Disney and Dish have taken a major step towards a new carriage agreement after their dispute led to the Disney networks going dark on Dish and Sling TV at midnight on Sept. 30. “We have reached a handshake agreement with Dish/Sling TV, which properly reflects fair market value and terms for The Walt Disney Company’s unparalleled content,” Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution said in a statement Sunday night. “As a result, we are pleased to restore our portfolio of networks on a temporary basis while both parties work to finalize a new deal.”

Dish Network said Tuesday it reached a new carriage agreement with Game Show Network, ending a three week blackout. Game Show Network is being restored to the Dish TV and Sling TV lineups.

Dish wants to deploy 5G wireless services in the 12 GHz spectrum band. DirecTV thinks that’s going to present serious interference issues with its satellite TV service.

Dish Network on Tuesday announced a new $3.3 billion agreement with T-Mobile that lowers the prices Dish must pay to put its customers onto T-Mobile’s 5G network. The financial analysts at New Street Research speculated that the agreement represents a “modest negative” for AT&T, which inked its own $5 billion network-access deal with Dish last year. According to the analysts, Dish now has less incentive to move its Boost Mobile customer traffic onto AT&T’s network.

Dish Network counted subscriber losses for both its satellite and streaming pay TV businesses, totaling 462,000 across both vMVPD Sling TV and Dish TV. “In regard to subscribers for all our brands, we simply didn’t execute according to our expectations,” said Dish CEO Erik Carlson on Friday’s quarterly 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.

Dish Network, which is in the midst of a years-long shift from satellite pay-TV operator to wireless provider, met Wall Street expectations in the fourth quarter. The company said revenue came in at $4.45 billion in the period ending Dec. 31, down slightly from $4.56 billion in the year-earlier period. Earnings per share totaled 87 cents, down from $1.25 in the 2020 quarter.

Charge!, one of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s over-the-air multicast networks, has added carriage with Dish Network and Altice USA’s Optimum cable systems, adding distribution to about 10 million homes. Subscribers to Dish with an internet connected box will be able to watch Charge!, as will subscribers to Dish’s Sling TV streaming service.

Satellite TV provider Dish has reached a deal to bring Tegna’s 64 stations back to its customers after a four-month dispute. Ahead of the Super Bowl and as the Winter Olympics is getting underway, the two companies announced the new deal Friday. The dispute started in October.

Dish Network tonight could lose 12 stations in seven markets due to a carriage dispute with their owner, Morgan Murphy Media.

On Saturday night, Dish Network signed a new carriage agreement with Block Communications, returning seven Mideast network affiliates to the satcaster’s lineup after an eight-day absence.The affected channels are: WOHL Lima, Ohio (ABC, CBS); WLIO Lima (NBC, Fox); WDRB Louisville, Ky. (Fox); WBKI Louisville, (CW); and WAND Decatur, Ill. (NBC).

Dish is now without at least 106 channels due to 11 different carriage battles that span from last Wednesday night to 30 months ago. The blacked-out channels include 75 local network affiliates, and 31 regional sports networks.

DirecTV and Dish Network are in fresh talks to merge after years of on-again, off-again wrangling and multiple clampdowns from federal antitrust officials. Now, however, insiders are optimistic a Dish-DirecTV deal could pass regulatory muster as concerns about the market power of the struggling companies have waned, sources say. Some executives likewise argue that a merger could give a surprise boost to the U.S.’s troubled rollout of 5G wireless services.

The new deal keeps Sinclair’s 144 TV station in 85 markets on the Dish TV satellite service. It also puts Sinclair’s Tennis Channel on Dish and on Dish’s virtual multichannel video programming distributor service, Sling TV. Sinclair’s regional sports networks remain off Dish and Sling as they have been since July 2019 in a separate dispute.

Dish Network responded to Tegna’s cross-complaint — and its response to Dish’s earlier legal action — as “meritless and riddled with mischaracterizations and falsehoods.” Satellite-TV provider Dish and Tegna are locked in a retransmission consent battle that has left millions of Dish subscribers without access to the programming on Tegna’s stations since Oct. 6.

It charges the satellite provider with bad-faith conduct in retrans negotiations and responds to what it calls Dish’s “false claims.”

The company finished the quarter with 10.98 million pay TV subscribers, down from 10.99 million at the end of the second quarter.  It had 8.42 million Dish TV subs, down from 8.55 million, but it grew its streaming Sling TV subscribers to 2.56 million, up  from 2.44 million.

DirecTV is targetting its closest rival with a new promotion encouraging Dish Network subscribers to switch. For a limited time, DirecTV is offering a $150 prepaid Visa card to Dish TV subscribers who drop Dish and sign up for a DirecTV package under a two-year contract. The promotion is not extended to DirecTV Stream.

Dish has revealed on its website that it will raise prices on most programming packages by $5 a month, effective Nov. 16. The satcaster blamed rising programming acquisition costs for the increase, the same reason it (and other pay TV providers) has offered for years. Dish last raised prices in January of this year when it hiked most programming packages by $5 a month.

Dish Network said it filed a complaint with the FCC charging that Tegna is not negotiating a new retransmission deal in good faith. Tegna stations have been blacked out to Dish‘s satellite TV subscribers since Oct. 7. Tegna called the complaint “utterly baseless and without merit.

A Texas district court has found for Dish in the satellite service’s direct copyright infringement suit against streaming service Universe IPTV. The court found that the Arabic language IPTV service — owned and operated by defendants Mohamed Omar, Hossam Abd Elghany and Moustafa Maatouk — had provided access to Dish content to U.S. subscribers without authorization from Dish, directly infringing the satellite operators exclusive rights to distribute and perform that content.

Tegna’s stations were blacked out to Dish TV’s 3 million subscribers Wednesday evening after the two companies were unable to reach a new retransmission deal. The blackout affects Dish customers in 53 markets.

The broadcaster is telling the satellite provider’s customers that with an extension to the current carriage agreement set to expire, they could lose access to its stations.

Dish Network says that AT&T SportsNet and Root Sports Regional Sports Networks were removed from Dish TV Thursday in Denver, Pittsburgh and Seattle.

Dish and Sinclair Broadcast Group have reportedly agreed to an extension that will keep the broadcaster’s signals on Dish — for now. The two companies have been at odds over a new carriage agreement, that has threatened to take Sinclair-owned CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC affiliates and Tennis Channel dark on Dish. The two sides had come to a temporary extension agreement in mid-August while negotiations over a long-term carriage pact continued. The reported new extension is through the middle of September.

On Monday, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Dish Network agreed to a short-term extension of their carriage agreement hours before it was set to expire. David Gibber, Sinclair SVP and general counsel, said: “We have agreed to a short-term extension with Dish to continue conversations. We will continue to update our viewers as this develops. Sinclair stands willing to continue to negotiate in good faith and to enter into a longer extension to allow for the continued carriage of our channels to Dish subscribers.”

More than 140 Sinclair-owned stations are set to go dark today because of a carriage dispute between Sinclair and Dish Network. The latest disagreement over retransmission fees will affect 3.5 million Dish subscribers in 38% of the country.

The two legacy satellite TV operators face an existential crisis that even a merger won’t fix.

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.”

Although direct-to-consumer offerings are the latest rage, much of Sinclair’s future in the space could be determined by its retrans talks with Dish Network.

Dish Network and WarnerMedia have ended their three-year carriage dispute, effectively immediately. HBO and Cinemax, as well as streaming service HBO Max, will now be available to Dish consumers for the first time since 2018.