The ONLY smart thing Dish did here, was holding out for a jury trial. It's the only hope they have left. If they had stayed with the judge, this case would already be over.
Dish should have tried to negotiate up front in good faith with Voom, instead of Charlie's "gunslinger" tactics. MAYBE then they would have gotten somewhere, and we'd still have some form of Voom.
Voom ain't squeaky clean in this deal...Dish signed a bad contract (note their VP of Programming is long gone) and Voom elected to bleed them dry for the next 13-years of the contract since they couldn't find a buyer for VoomHD (15 channels package) and they didn't want to break it up into smaller chunks since Dish had MFN status (i.e., Dish would have to be offered similar terms). Likewise, if they did find takers for Monsters and a one or two other channels, they certainly wouldn't command the premium price that Dish was paying. Come 2007/8 HD was no longer a premium service and, in fact, many distributors were demanding free HD feeds when subscribing to the SD channels.
At this point Dish should have acknowledged they signed a bad contract, cut their ties with Voom, sent them a check for $500 million, and tell them to pound sand or take them to court if they wanted another penny. Voom would have quietly disappeared. Instead, Dish threatened Voom repeated (alternately blowing hot and cold) and, when they couldn't find a contractually legal way out of the agreement, they asked Voom to provide them with free service for six months in order to generate more HD customers while they ironed out their differences - Voom complied and Dish did not pay one penny for service during the it's final six months on Dish Network. According to Voom, Dish already knew they were going to terminate the agreement if Voom did not do as Dish wanted - it was bad faith Ergen style.
I'm not sure of the exact figures (haven't seen them in couple years) but I recall that Voom invested more than 300M in the Voom service and they were only paid something like 46M in affiliation fees from Dish. Again, don't quote me on this total since I don't feel like searching (and compiling) this information. The take-away is that Voom is out hundreds of millions of dollars in this deal and they are out to extract a pound of flesh from Dish Network. If so, AMC will not be on Dish for a long, long, long time...unless their unsophisticated rural bumpkins customers who don't care about Mad Men, The Walking Dead, Breading Bad, The Killing, Hell on Wheels (that's how Dish characterized them) start leaving for other providers.
On a side note, I don't watch the aforementioned shows and I really miss the former AMC channels when they used to show...well, American Movie Classics. I wonder how many of the aforementioned shows may have been exclusively produced for Voom if they had managed to obtain carriage deals with other providers or even stayed on Dish? Anyway, in retrospect Dish may have no other option than the terminate the Voom agreement, but they certainly went about it the wrong way...and decision that may cost them hundreds of millions if not billions. We shall see.
