Dish Pulls CNN, Doesn't Think Customers Still Paying For It Are Missing Much
from the you-really-don't-want-to-buy-what-I'm-selling dept
As another shining example of the fading value proposition of traditional cable, Dish Network last month pulled all Turner Broadcasting stations (including CNN, Headline News, and Cartoon Network) from their lineup because the two sides couldn't agree on a new retransmission fee contract. As we just got done saying, these feuds are growing more and more annoying as paying consumers not only lose access to content, but get bombarded with marketing missives as both sides try to blame the other guy for being greedy (See Turner's SaveMyShows.com website and Dish's DishStandsForYou.com website).In Dish's case, customers have lost access to content but they're still paying the same rates. Yet speaking this week on the company's earnings call, Dish CEO Charlie Ergen told customers eager to watch election coverage that not only may they never get CNN back, they really shouldn't miss it because nobody watches cable news these days anyway:
"When we take something down we’re prepared to leave it down forever. Things like CNN are not quite the product that they used to be. You can imagine: CNN down on election night would have been a disaster 15 or 20 years ago. Now there are plenty of other places for people to get news. In fact a lot of people get news not from TV but from their devices."While that might be true (given that CNN, like most cable news, is now more unintentional cultural satire than news), it's odd to hear a cable exec telling people they don't need to buy what he's selling, especially since the majority of cable channel lineup bundles are increasingly bloated with similarly-inane content. Ergen added that while the company does listen to customers, they're not going to here, since it's nice that Dish will save a buck:
"If we’re not going to be in a relationship with Turner then we would not have to raise our prices next year. And that would be slightly cash positive for us from a cash flow perspective. Yes, we listen to customers. But we would save a big, big, big check from a cash flow perspective. And for those folks who don’t care about news and cartoons, we have other news and cartoon shows."Again, that's probably not particularly comforting to Dish customers who are getting less content yet paying the same amount of money to Dish.
Some of this is just traditional Charlie Ergen negotiations bluster, given it's hard to sell TV content if you tell all of the people making it to go to hell. Unlike many cable execs, Dish and Ergen do see the cord cutting writing on the wall, and are planning to launch a live Internet video service sometime before the end of the year. However, that service again relies on the good graces of the broadcasters if it's going to survive; the same broadcasters who've been waging legal war against any disruptive technology that could possibly topple the traditional cable cash cow, whether it's Dish's automatic ad-skipping DVR or Aereo. Turner says they were originally on board with the project, but after the last month's feuding says they're reconsidering the green light.
Even if it's a little ham-fisted, Ergen's trying to make the point that the current TV ecosystem and these often bi-annual rate hikes simply aren't sustainable. It's the same point being made by small and mid-sized cable companies that have started to leave the cable business entirely because they can't afford to participate, and it's same point being made by cord-cutters who are tired of paying an arm and a leg for an ocean of crap content.
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Filed Under: cable tv, charlie ergen, cnn, retransmission, retransmission fees, tv
Companies: dish, dish network, turner
Reader Comments
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I anxiously await netflix like platforms :)
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People keep asking for a la carte access. CBS All Access is exactly that.
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CBS will cut a deal with AMC to include walking dead
then a deal will be cut to include HBOs offering so you get all three (even if you dont want all three, you wont have a choice).
and it will just continue to grow and morph until we have the exact same thing as we have now... except on the internet.
and because the only thing that actually changed was the "on the internet" part, some idiots will launch "geothermal nuclear patent party" simply because the exact same thing exists but now "on the internet" and deals will be struck and prices will go up and ta-da! the only thing thats changed is the transmission medium.
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I do know that the streaming services that have been provided by the various cable and TV companies have, by and large, been various degrees of bad. They'll need to step up their game.
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Until, you know, people can find their other news and cartoons from other sources, such as their phones.
In short: The statement made translates to "Who needs DishTV."
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tftfy
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Video killed the radio start.
Of course I realize that Dish will cave because Turner has a monopoly on other stuff. Dish can't compete if it doesn't carry that little bit of the Turner forced bundle that people actually care about.
Dish is in the same exact position as everyone of their customers.
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The power that content providers wield in terms of wholesale bundling is why cable is such a bloody mess to begin with. Cutting out the middle man will not change anything. The crapulence we experience as consumers is largely unfiltered through the relevant middle men (cable operators).
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The question is can and will the alternatives buy up the cable companies to supply the broadband that their customers need to access their video on demand services?
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Simple solution: Unbundle
Pass it along to the customer. Transparently.
Drop the monthly fee by the amount paid to Turner on the old contract.
Then offer Turner's channels a-la-carte as add-ons, for whatever Turner wants to charge.
Let the customer decide if the price is worth paying, or not.
That ought to put a lot more pressure on Turner's pricing.
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If they were serious
But shocker they are just pocketing the difference.
Guess whose side that puts me on?
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Re: If they were serious
Does it really matter how nice they appear to be treating you before they rip your throat out?
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They aren't just "pocketing the difference," so guess who's side that puts me on?
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Did Dish just obsolete themselves?
Not just News. We can use devices to get TV shows, movies, games, and a lot of other consumable content. So what value does Disk provide anymore?
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Re: Did Dish just obsolete themselves?
the US is a lot bigger then most people realize and there are parts that satellite and/or high powered AM radio are the only broadcast services you are really going to get.
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Some parts of this country still have no choices other than a DSL that cannot support streaming of movies and other content without constant buffering.
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Haha. Forget CNN. Cartoon Network is the big news.
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Re: Haha. Forget CNN. Cartoon Network is the big news.
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Re: funny?
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TW and Dish both bad players...
Turner is a division of Time Warner, is the company looking for a buyout from AT&T. Turner according to the trade magazines is raising fees to make their buyout more leveraged. They don't see ad revenue increasing and these increased carriage fees make their sale more likely. This is about shareholder value, not consumer value, not about Dish Network or any other network, it's all about Time Warner's bottom line to shareholders.
Dish can, "eat my shorts". In my view, they are not the champion of lower rates or better service.
One of the reasons I picked up Dish was for their high definition line up. I have something in my account called HD programming for life. This means they debt my bank account for payments... Well they've slowly been removing those HD channels and replacing them with Standard Definition channels or not replacing them at all. Disney channels are all standard definition, they were HD until Dish had a spat with Disney over carriage fees. The VOOM channels which come from the AMC umbrella were all HD and uncut and had some interesting channels and were removed and not replaced, not even in standard definition.
Dish complains about must carry signals (local broadcast channels to the viewer)well my former hardware from Dish had an antenna connection, I could pick these stations up and DVR them, in my latest Hopper hardware they removed the antenna connection entirely and as I understand it are focusing on pushing the FCC to drop must carry signals which would mean not even using their DVR when it came time to watching ABC, CBS, NBC or even the CW. They haven't even mentioned how this will impact consumers, just how it will impact their bottom line.
They bought Blockbuster Video and promised streaming, which does work through some of their DVRs but even those streamed movies don't make up for other losses. The quality of those movies is poor, the selection is highly limited and in my view not worth a connection to the internet.
My prices didn't decrease or remain flat when they removed VOOM, they didn't decrease or remain flat when they took away Disney in high definition. Dish has spent billions on buying radio spectrum and attempts at buying mobile carriers. All that money out in my view could have paid for programming losses to the customer.
As for Turner, "eat my shorts" about sums it up too. I don't see a focus on consumers, unless you're a shareholder consuming their stock and lining up for a buyout from AT&T which may or may not happen.
No where in any of these negotiations past or present do I feel that consumers are the focus and that's where cord cutting comes into play. Keep pushing me and others to cut the cord, your shareholders won't have any value left to sell and we as actual consumers might find the cord cutting alternatives a better bargain.
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Re: TW and Dish both bad players...
Sorry about that.
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Re: TW and Dish both bad players...
This is a lie. Dish has been replacing all SD channels with HD channels at no extra cost. Over the last five years, I've had to update my channel list about twice a year as the HD channels come out and the channel lineup shifts about due to the extra channels. It's your own damn fault if you're too stupid to check ALL the channels to notice that they've moved as new HD channels cause all the channels to shift around.
The rest of your arguments are equally stupid and invalid. Local channels have long made it tough on satellite companies. I get MeTV from Albuquerque, even thought the channel from Durango is closer and better. But Albuquerque "owns" the area I live in though I never go there as it's hours away. Dish cannot provide me a better choice because "local" broadcasters took that choice from them and me.
And the less said about your rant on the Hopper the better.
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I've pulled my accounts from Dish
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Also, you know which company is being too greedy by how much money can afford to spend with a PR campaign to slander their opponent's name. Looks to me like both Turner and Dish are making too much money.
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CNN and History
I have to share my favorite CNN memory- during the Gulf war in 1990-1991, Wolf Blitzer and his CNN crew were broadcasting from their hotel roof in Saudi Arabia. It was the middle of the night, and Scud missiles of unknown payload type were reported to have impacted somewhere in the city. Word was sent up to the roof that the bomb shelter in the basement of the hotel was going to be closed and sealed. Not knowing a damned thing about nerve gas (or anything else, for that matter) Wolfie sent a crew member down to the shelter to keep it open and say that he and the rest of the CNN crew would come down, "if we see or smell anything." (After all, who wouldn't want to risk their own life for some dumbass that didn't get the memo about nerve gas being colorless and odorless?) The crew member returned moments later with the news that they'd all been locked out of the shelter. Wolf's expression was priceless, the camera capturing maybe the one instant in his life when he suddenly realized just how big a moron he truly is.
How can anyone not willingly pay serious dough for this kind of entertainment?
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While Wolf's not exactly the archetypical raving, angry "war monger," now that I think about it, the label fits. Lots of conflicts have resulted from the stupidity of dimwits rather than from any real maliciousness or conscious design.
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Cordcutter Here
"A river of effluent that flows into an ocean of crap." That pretty much describes the products offered by the entertainment industry today.
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Back to the Future
There's plenty of crap to distract yourself with on the broadcast channels. There's even network news to help contribute to your clinical depression.
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Dish network.
I just might think about signing up with the other company and dropping dish. one never can tell.
thank you for reading this
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Connecting the Dots
The trend now seems to be an inexorable flow towards a very small number of people owning all of telecom. And while you may like to think of that as a conspiracy theory, this is exactly what happened with satellite. They eventually maneuvered around to illegalize, not capturing the signal, but descrambling it, which protected the centralized model for global communication for another two decades.
What is key is establishing a decentralized peer to peer model. The internet is doomed. It was open as long as it took to pay for the infrastructure. Now, a small number of people own the infrastructure, and technology is going to have to evolve away from it or else we are stuck with another dead end attempt at global open communication.
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Turner...
They have some funny shows that can be better than cartoons.
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Turner
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F#%k Dish
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Pissed at Dish
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