Satellite Providers

DirecTV said a California judge has stricken the central claims in a breach of contract lawsuit filed by Herring Networks over DirecTV’s decision to drop the One America News cable network in January 2022. The ruling was made Jan. 13 by Judge John Meyer of the Superior Court of California in San Diego County.

As cord cutting grows, TV providers like DirecTV have been getting hit hard recently as Americans look for ways to cut their bills as inflation hits their wallets. Now it has been reported that DirecTV will be laying off hundreds of employees to help offset the losses. According to a report by CNBC, about 10% of the satellite service’s managers will be laid off, with their last day on Jan. 20.

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.

DirecTV lost about 500,000 subscribers in the third quarter, leaving it with a total of 13.3 million, according to a report by credit rating agency Fitch Ratings. DirecTV was spun off by AT&T last year and no longer publicly reports its subscriber numbers. Cord cutting has accelerated recently, but Fitch indicated that DirecTV loss rates “have substantially improved over the last two years, driven by lower churn.”

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.

DirecTV is asking the 27 stations owned by Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting that are blacked out to its subscribers because of a retransmission consent fee dispute to return their signals through election day. The satellite company is offering to pay the stations whatever new rate winds up being negotiated retroactively to the return of the signals.

Mission Broadcasting, which operates 25 network affiliates spanning Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Indiana, New York and a dozen other states, has been pulled from DirecTV and U-verse pay TV platforms. The skirmish marks another pay TV blackout that involves Nexstar Media Group, which manages the Mission stations.

Dish Network says it will raise subscription fees across most of the programming packages offered on its flagship satellite service next month. In a statement sent to customers this week, Dish said the price hikes were the result of increased programming costs associated with carrying popular television networks. Dish did not say which channels or programmers were to blame for the price hikes, but affirmed that some subscribers “may have observed some channel interruptions because of this.”

Leichtman Research Group estimates that DirecTV lost around 400,000 customers across its DirecTV satellite, DirecTV virtual and U-verse TV platforms in the second quarter. LRG postulates that DirecTV, jointly owned by AT&T and private equity company TPG Capital, has around 13.9 million remaining subscribers. This is around 12 million fewer than existed between DirecTV satellite and U-verse back in May 2014, when AT&T agreed to pay $49 billion to buy DirecTV and — briefly — usurped Comcast to become the nation’s No. 1 pay TV operator.

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.

DirecTV said it is making programming from the Marquee Sports Network, a joint venture of Sinclair Broadcast Group and the Chicago Cubs, available nationwide, except for live games of the Cubs and the WNBA Chicago Sky. The satellite company already carried the regional sports network in Chicago.

DirecTV is again removing four A&E-owned channels from subscriber lineups if the satcaster deems that the subscriber isn’t watching them very often. The channels are: The History Channel, A&E Network, Vice, and Lifetime Movies. All four channels are owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture owned by Disney and Hearst.

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.

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 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.

The right-wing cable channel One America News Network — which has spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the safety of coronavirus vaccines — will be dropped by one of its largest television distributors later this year. The decision by DirecTV, a satellite and streaming network with about 15 million subscribers, is a significant setback for One America News and its owners, the Herring family. Losing its slot on the DirecTV lineup will almost certainly diminish the network’s overall audience and cut into its annual revenue.

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.

As the calendar flips over to 2022, DirecTV customers will again see their rates go up — in some cases, as much as 10% — continuing its pattern of annual price hikes. The pay-TV provider is again blaming the increases on higher programming costs. The price increases will apply to most DirecTV plans and go into effect starting Jan. 23, 2022.

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.

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.

The AT&T-owned satellite operator says it offers “other, more popular” financial news networks. Bloomberg was also dropped from DirecTV Stream and Uverse.

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

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.”

AT&T has completed the spinoff of DirecTV into a new entity part-owned by private equity firm TPG, capping a costly six-year adventure in the satellite TV business. The new entity, whose financials will no longer be included on the AT&T balance sheet, unveiled new branding and a new home for its internet-delivered TV packages. Later this month, DirecTV Stream will become the umbrella for streaming offerings like the one formerly known as AT&T TV Now (originally DirecTV Now).

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.

No matter how you look at it, first quarter was another disaster for traditional cable and satellite. Leading the pack was DirecTV with a loss of 620,000 subscribers. As first […]

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.

Dish Network has notified subscribers that they’re going to lose more regional sports networks on April 1 when its deal to carry the NBC Regional Sports Networks expires. The timing is odd, coming days after Dish announced a deal with DraftKings, which wants viewers watching sports and betting on the outcomes. Under poker player and chairman Charlie Ergen, Dish has been folding its relationships with RSNs, which he had deemed offering too low a return for too high a price.

Dish Network says it reached a strategic agreement that will bring DraftKings sports book and fantasy sports to Dish customers. The DraftKings app will be integrated into the Dish TV Hopper platform. Down the road, DraftKings will be added to Sling TV and Boost Mobile. The move comes as more media companies form alliances with the growing legal betting industry.