Dish Network Corp. lost more pay TV subscribers than expected and Sling TV, its streaming service, saw little growth, adding only 7,000 subscribers in the first quarter. The company’s overall pay TV business lost 259,000 subscribers on a net basis in Q1.
Ending a nearly eight-month standoff, Dish Network and Univision Communications signed a new long-term carriage deal. The companies said restoration of Univision networks and stations on DishLatino and Dish will begin immediately and all pending litigation has been settled.
Jessell | Satellite TV’s Orbit Is Failing Fast
Both DirecTV and long-time rival Dish Network have recently reported fourth quarter 2018 operating results and the numbers are not good. The satellite operators are suffering from the same problem as cable operators are — the proliferation of broadband OTT services. None of this is good news for broadcasters since the slow migration of subs from cable and satellite to OTT will likely suppress retrans revenue growth.
Dish Quarterly Revenue Drops 5%
Dish Network on Wednesday reported a nearly 5% drop in quarterly revenue, as the satellite TV service provider lost more than expected pay-TV subscribers. The company said its pay-TV business, which includes both satellite TV and streaming service Sling TV, lost a net 334,000 subscribers during the fourth quarter, more than what analysts had expected Dish to lose at 264,000, according to research firm FactSet.
Dish Network, which has blacked out several Univision-run channels after failing to reach a new distribution deal with the programmer, has lobbed a lawsuit at Univision claiming that the Spanish-language broadcaster is infringing a batch of patents tied to adaptive bit-rate streaming.
Exclusives
Over the weekend, Dish began alerting existing subscribers that prices on their programming packages will rise in January, the fifth major pay TV operator to announce that it’s hiking monthly video fees in 2019.
Dish Network and its virtual MVPD Sling TV are the latest to join up with Comscore’s ongoing beta trial for its new Comscore Campaign Ratings ad measurement platform. The ad inventory for both Dish and Sling TV’s live linear programming and video on-demand will be part of the beta. Dish is the first pay TV provider to join the program, and Comscore said Dish Media’s inclusion broadens the measurement to include addressable and linear ads.
Tegna and Dish Network said they reached a multi-year carriage agreement just hours after Tegna’s stations went dark to Dish subscribers Saturday morning. The companies said that the stations’ signals will be restored to the Dish lineup immediately.
Univision on Tuesday said that Dish Network has decided not to renew its carriage agreement for Univision Deportes Network, broadending the dispute between the two companies. Dish dropped Univision’s lifestyle cable networks in April and its main channel in June. In recent statements, Dish has indicated little interest in bringing the channels back.
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 Revenue Falls 5% As Subscribers Drop
AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia has accused the U.S. Department of Justice of “collaborating” with Dish Network in a high profile dispute over carrying HBO and Cinemax.
HBO has gone dark on the Dish Network amid a standoff over carriage agreements, the first time it has been off air on one of its major distributors in the company’s 40-year history.
WGEM Quincy Signals Returned To Dish
Quincy Media’s NBC-Fox affiliate WGEM Quincy, Ill. (DMA 174) are once again being carried on Dish Network after a new retransmission agreement was reached.
Univision has sent a letter to the heads of the FCC and Federal Trade Commission buttressing its case that Dish continued to market the channels that had gone dark on the satellite service. The two are embroiled in a retransmission consent impasse that has resulted in Dish not carrying Univision, UniMas and Galavision since the end of June.
A license agreement has expired, but Dish still tells its subscribers they can get Univision, according to new counterclaims filed.
Sometime in the next week, CNN’s parent company Turner will be filing court papers providing evidence for how it has allegedly been cheated by Dish Network out of license payments for the cable news network. The case has remained under the radar for more than a year since it was initially filed under seal.
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.
Discovery has reached a renewal of its distribution agreement with Dish Network that will also put the company’s channels on Dish’s streaming TV service Sling TV.
Dish Loses KRGV, WRBZ Over Retrans Fees
The Manship-owned ABC affiliates in Harlingen, Texas, and Baton Rouge, La., went dark on the satellite provider on Friday. Manship said it had granted Dish multiple contract extensions in the hopes of coming up with a new deal.
Quincy Pulls WAOW In Dish Retrans Dispute
The owner of ABC affiliate WAOW Wausau, Wis., has blacked out the channel for Dish Network subscribers as part of a fight with the satellite television provider over its monthly rates for local channels.
Vivek Khemka has become the latest top executive at Dish Network to leave the company, with Liberty Latin America announcing that he’s slated to become the company’s new chief technology officer, starting next month.
Victoria Stations In Retrans Talks With Dish
Victoria Television Group’s local broadcast channels are hanging on by a thread for Dish Network customers. The television group in Victoria, Texas, is negotiating new retrans contracts with Dish for KAVU (ABC), KXTS (CBS) and KMOL (NBC), which ended in mid-July.
Dish Network says the removal of Univision Communications’ TV networks — from both its satellite and over-the-top Sling TV services — might be for good. On June 30, after Dish and Univision failed to come to terms on a contract renewal, more than 60 Univision-owned stations and cable channels including UniMás and Galavision went dark on Dish’s pay-TV platforms. “This removal could become permanent,” Dish said in a 10-Q regulatory filing Friday.
Dish Beats Estimates As Sub Losses Slow
Dish Network reported better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue on Friday, as the pace of subscriber losses for its pay-TV services slowed. Dish has struggled to stem losses from cord-cutting as TV viewers increasingly move to online video streaming services.
With Univision Communications’ dispute with Dish Network ending its second week with seemingly no end in sight, the broadcaster has taken to the airwaves and social media to inform its viewers of other ways they can watch its programming, including via cable, telco and its own over-the-top service Univision Now.
Dish Network Corp. is being asked by the FCC to provide details about its wireless network plans, a not-so-gentle reminder that the company has less than two years to use […]
Sling TV has stopped offering its Broadcast Extra add-on amid a program licensing dispute with Univision. “We are not currently offering our Broadcast Extra service, which includes ABC, Univision and UniMás, on Sling TV. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes with viewing the programming that matters to you,” said a Sling FAQ posted Monday.
Univision says that it offered Dish Network a short-term extension before its distribution agreement expired on Saturday, but that Dish turned it down, leading to a blackout of Univision’s stations and some of its networks.
The largest Spanish-language network, already buffeted by declining ratings, on Monday suffered through its third day of being blacked out on Dish Network and Sling TV. The carriage dispute is keeping Univision away from the pay TV outlets’ 13 million subscribers. Talks between the parties continue.
More than 60 Univision O&O station went dark on Dish’s national platforms as the companies battle over a new carriage contract. The Univision-owned stations and cable channels including Univision Deportes and Galavision went dark at 7 p.m. ET Saturday as the previous contract expired. The sides have been negotiating a new pact for weeks. Dish on Friday night declared the talks at an impasse.
Under the aegis of Spectrum Co., the partnership of Sinclair and Nexstar, Dish is testing the transmission and reception capabilities of ATSC 3.0 using a swathe of its own 700 MHz E Block spectrum (former TV ch. 56) and Spectrum Co.’s 3.0-enabled single frequency network in Dallas.
Another carriage dispute looms. Univision Communications’ lifestyle channels have been dark on Dish Network since around 7 p.m. ET Saturday when the current carriage dispute expired. Univision said it offered an extension agreement to Dish to keep the channels live but was refused.
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.
