Ergen’s $50B Spectrum Binge Rattles TV Biz
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.
This article was originally posted on bloomberg.com
pay tv is still a utility camouflaged as a entertainment company. It annoys me every day that I have to subsidize the delivery of hundreds of channels that I will never, ever look at.
But if you only watch ESPN, many others who don’t are subsidizing you. It’s all good.
… that’s because ESPN is the big pig at the cable trough, RustbeltAlumnus2.
It is true of other channels as well, so his point is still valid.
Charlies is sitting on some licenses that must be put to use by 2016…….tick…..tick……tick
If there are unused licenses (I assume spectrum) then why does the FCC have to destroy broadcast television by selling off channels 38 to 51? Once those channels are lost I’m sure they are gone from TV forever.
“Gone” is only bad if broadcast TV is resurrected as a viable business. But the last 20 years have proven otherwise. Broadcast’s best days are behind it. Using spectrum for one-to-many was only justifiable in the absence of an alternative (1940-1990). Now that we live in a wired nation, local stations are anachronisms, just as wired telephones (point-to-point) are old hat. Wikipedia-search the phrase Negroponte switch.
And, one certain someone is still stuck in 1999. Rustbelt, it’s 2015 not 1999. Unfortunately I think much of the broadcast industry is thinking like it’s 1999. The problem they had in 1999 was that they were thinking like it was 1973. Always 15-30 years behind the curve.
Sorry Rustbelt, but broadcast television (Networks and Stations) are STILL viable businesses and are doing very well, thank you. The Networks are doing fine; there are more diginets than ever before with more (Laff, Buzzr, Decades) to come. And, as for the Nebraska stations that went dark last year because of what Gray did, the new owners will put them back on the air shortly (Programming to be announced). Proof Positive that Broadcast TV is Alive and Well.
Just another reason, Chuck, that the FCC needs to cancel the Spectrum Auction. Now!!!
@Flashflood. Again, your bitching about the auction here will do nothing to change it.
Yeah, Insider, maybe I by myself cannot do that, but it seems to me that more people than just myself are opposed to this auction, too. The more, the merrier. As far as I’m concerned, the wireless carriers can buy portions from Dish Network of the spectrum that Dish bought in an earlier auction from the FCC, and everyone will be happy!
And none of you will get anything accomplished by spamming the same comment here.
Actually Dish is not sitting on enough to accomplish what the Spectrum Auction minimum will do – so your solution is invalid anyway.