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DISH, DirecTV to merge?

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rvvaquero said:
Just one question, where's does Encore Westerns fit in with this scenario. Love me some Encore Westerns.
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You didn't know? It was supposed sold to Comcast and will be relaunched as a companion channel to The Weather Channel. Its going to be called Encore Western Weather or EWW, and will only focus on weather forecasts for the West Coast.
 
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rvvaquero said:
Just one question, where's does Encore Westerns fit in with this scenario. Love me some Encore Westerns.
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The relevant deal there would be that Lionsgate is trying to either spin off or sale Starz, of which the Encore channels are a part. CBS made an unsolicited offer to buy Starz back in the spring, before re-merging with Viacom, but walked away because Lionsgate wanted too much. I still think ViacomCBS will end up buying Starz, or even all of Lionsgate, and then folding Starz into Showtime. As the media landscape consolidates into a handful of major streaming services, I'm not sure either Showtime or Starz (which each has around 30 million subs) has the scale to survive. They're direct competitors and it would make sense for them to combine. Starz is the weaker of the two, especially given that Comcast may drop them from their entire system by end of this year (part of the reason that Lionsgate's stock price has dropped).

What does all that mean for the future viability of Encore Westerns? Who knows. Showtime and Starz are both transforming from linear cable channels into on-demand streaming services and I expect that at least some of their many linear channels will eventually die off. But hey, MeTV shows westerns all morning and afternoon on Saturdays...
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
I don't see it happening this way, as DISH owns almost as much spectrum at AT&T, I couldn't see any federal agency allowing AT&T to take over DISH and DISH's assets.
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The wording in the article isn't clear but it seems to me that the deal that's being proposed by the private equity group (Apollo) is that AT&T and DISH would each spin off their satellite TV businesses into a new third company that would combine and operate the DirecTV and DISH services. Because DirecTV is significantly larger (more subs) than DISH, AT&T would have a majority ownership stake in this new company, while DISH would have a minority stake. The private equity group would put up some amount of cash to own a small piece of the new company.

So if my understanding is correct, DISH would still exist as a parent company that directly owns and operates their new cellular/5G business (and possibly Sling too), while retaining a minority stake in the new combined satellite TV company.

I agree with you that it would be a complete non-starter from an antitrust perspective for AT&T to gain direct or indirect control of all that DISH-owned cellular spectrum and their new cellular/5G business (if, in fact, that ends up happening -- we'll see what comes to pass with the T-Mo/Sprint deal).
 
IF such a thing happened, and IF the new entity changed the rules or equipment, they would likely accelerate their losses of subscribers. And I think all concerned know that. Which makes such a venture quite unlikely, IMHO.

If Dish came out and said they'd struck a new deal, and you had to watch your DVR'd stuff within 90 days, including stuff already recorded on EHDs- well, even I would likely cut that cord.


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navychop said:
IF such a thing happened, and IF the new entity changed the rules or equipment, they would likely accelerate their losses of subscribers. And I think all concerned know that. Which makes such a venture quite unlikely, IMHO.

If Dish came out and said they'd struck a new deal, and you had to watch your DVR'd stuff within 90 days, including stuff already recorded on EHDs- well, even I would likely cut that cord.
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That seems unlikely. This hypothetical new company would be solely focused on running a satellite TV business. They wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot by unnecessarily running off subscribers like that.

But what would this new company look like? Lots of unanswered questions. For instance, would it maintain the separate DTV and DISH brands (along with their existing channel packages, pricing and policies) for some amount of time before merging them together? That seems plausible.

Or, OTOH, maybe the DISH brand is immediately killed, with the DTV brand taking over the whole business (since DTV has more subs than DISH, and AT&T would be the majority parent owner of the new company). But DISH subscribers would be grandfathered into their existing channel packages for as long as they want to keep them. Obviously, both satellite fleets would have to remain operational for years to come, allowing all the existing customer equipment in use to stay put.

Regardless of what happens with the branding, channel packages, etc., it would make sense to standardize all new customer installations going forward on one set of consumer equipment, with dishes pointed at the superior DTV sat fleet (since it has more system capacity and will last longer, thanks to the newly launched T16). The DISH Hopper is arguably regarded as a better DVR than the aging DTV Genie, so maybe we'd see all new installs get a new "DirecTV Hopper," i.e. the existing DISH Hopper with updated firmware made to work with the existing line of DTV dishes, LNBs, etc.

Regardless of whether such a deal happens, I expect that we're going to see AT&T introduce before long a new default set of channel packages (a revamped Plus and Max, plus maybe a Starter package at the low end, with HBO Max automatically included in all packages) that will be sold to new subs across both AT&T TV and DTV. If the proposed deal above went through, those packages should be available to customers on old DISH equipment too. The DISH sat fleet already carries nearly all the channels that happen to be part of the various AT&T/DTV packages anyway, so they should be able to make it work (although maybe customers who want certain add-on Extra Packs, e.g. niche sports channels, would be forced to get their dish and other equipment switched out if the company didn't have room to squeeze in every last DTV channel on the DISH sats).
 
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Everyone knows that in business, feelings don't get in the way... but when it comes to ATT, it's not about business for Charlie. I believe it was 2009 that Charlie said he would never do business with ATT ever again, so ceding control your ATT would probably not be something he'd do.
 
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JSheridan said:
I just can't see Charlie giving up control, especially to AT&T. :p
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As I've said, the only way I can see Charlie going through with a deal like this is if Charlie has a new hobby horse in the form of acquiring Boost Mobile and building out a new 5G network. Because I think this proposed deal would effectively just kill the DISH brand and fold its operations into the DirecTV brand. Charlie (and whatever is left of the DISH parent corp.) would be a minority investor in the combined satellite TV business, with little input on operations or strategy. That would be in AT&T's hands.

But Charlie's 5G dreams probably aren't gonna happen unless the T-Mobile/Sprint deal goes through. So I just don't see any real movement on a DirecTV/DISH deal happening until the T-Mo/Sprint things gets settled. And who knows how long that's gonna take...
 
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