Dish Network dropping Fox, FS1, FS2, and Big Ten Network

[Fenway]

Dish has not been sports-friendly for years but now they have upped the anti by dropping Fox owned OTA stations as well.


Fox unleashes pre-planned commercial blitz blaming Dish for carriage dispute, which isn't a good sign

On Thursday afternoon, a carriage dispute resulted in Dish Network dropping Fox, FS1, FS2, and Big Ten Network (and that’s after Dish pulled RSNs in July). According to John Ourand of Sports Business Journal, “Fox executives told Dish Network that it could keep its channels live while negotiating a new deal,” but Dish “rebuffed the offer.”

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[Blackhawkswincup]

That seems like a horrendous move by Dish

I get they are pressured and such but if Fox offered what is essentially an extension this move makes no sense other then Dish somehow thinking they can bully Fox which wouldn't be smart

 

[Legionnaire11]

Is it a Dish issue or a FOX issue? Because my local FOX on ATT is airing the "Call ATT and tell them you don't want to lose FOX" stuff. And we know Sinclair just added a bunch of new FOX affiliates (Sinclair is the largest FOX owner), so perhaps they have tried to leverage their position to get a better deal.

On the other hand, our local ABC affiliate (Nexstar) was off of ATT for two months and right now our CW channel is off (owned by Sinclair).

 

[Grudy0]

I had railed for years elsewhere that Dish's business practices were suspect. Some Dish subscribers kept stating that these fights were necessary in order to keep pricing low, because that's what the corporate folks at Dish told them.

However, Dish now seems to be anti-sports - they've been without the Fox Sports regional networks for two-plus months, where those networks were owned by Disney when the blackout occurred and then transferred to Sinclair, and also without Altitude like both DirecTV and Comcast. The addition of main Fox which holds the NFL, Pac-12 and Big 12 football over this weekend and other various FS1 and FS2, as well as those games on the Big Ten Network sounds like Dish is trying to exert pressure where there is none.

And before anyone mentions cord-cutting, it's been a bit more fast and furious at Dish. At the beginning of 2015, Dish had around 14 million subscribers. Fast-forward to today, at the end of June they had 9.56 million, shedding almost a third of their subscriber base. Sure, the Sling TV operation has grown from 0 to just over 2 million today, but that's an awful lot of people that have left the service. Some of that is likely due to other disputes - Dish nor Sling carry HBO and Cinemax any longer.

And with this fight one would have to wonder how many more subscribers have jumped ship this quarter - no regional sports nets for most of the NHL and NBA teams and the last two months of the baseball season and now Fox's national coverage of sports on the Fox owned-and-operated stations as well as FS1, FS2 and BTN? This is going to be an interesting review of the Dish business plan.

 

[Grudy0]

Is it a Dish issue or a FOX issue? Because my local FOX on ATT is airing the "Call ATT and tell them you don't want to lose FOX" stuff. And we know Sinclair just added a bunch of new FOX affiliates (Sinclair is the largest FOX owner), so perhaps they have tried to leverage their position to get a better deal.

On the other hand, our local ABC affiliate (Nexstar) was off of ATT for two months and right now our CW channel is off (owned by Sinclair).

Fox owns many of their large market affiliates. I think Sinclair is likely the next largest outlet holder by broadcast coverage.

This is a Fox issue for Dish.

I am a DirecTV subscriber, and my local Fox and CW is owned by Sinclair, so DirecTV isn't immune from these fights. I also am getting the crawl to call and voice my opinion. As a matter of fact, the local news on that channel this morning had a hit-piece that barely went into why the blackout may happen - for example, Sinclair mentioned nothing about the new Chicago RSN but DirecTV is countering that Sinclair is trying to leverage the new Chicago Cubs RSN with a high dollar figure for carriage.

It's somewhat the same fight for Dish, but Dish is simply stating that they don't want the FS1/FS2/BTN deals to be tied to the retransmission agreements for the Fox network-owned stations.

 

[IU Hawks fan]

Not sure why any sports fan would have Dish. They've been pulling this garbage for over a decade.

 

[LT]

Been relying on my parents' DISH subscription to watch sports for several years now. This makes it impossible to watch hockey and a lot harder to watch a lot of football.

f*** this. These are the same idiots who lambast pirating, but then turn around and make it impossible to watch anything reasonably.

From a personal standpoint this sucks, but I also don't understand it at all from a business standpoint. I would imagine a large portion of satellite subscribers use that subscription primarily for sports. Why jeopardize that?

 

[Fenway]

Column: WUTV–DirecTV battle puts broadcast of Bills games, World Series in jeopardy

Here we go again.

WIVB-TV and WNLO-TV, the local Nexstar stations, were off AT&T’s DirecTV from July 4 until Aug. 29 when a national retransmission agreement was reached.

Now it is the local Sinclair Broadcast Group stations, WUTV and WNYO, that are in jeopardy of going off DirecTV at 4 p.m. Friday because of the same retransmission issue.

The Sinclair stations have recently started running crawls alerting viewers to the possible disappearance of the channels.

As was the case with WIVB and WNLO, it is a national issue and not a local one affecting about 90,000 households in Western New York.

The negotiations are about how much AT&T will pay Sinclair to carry its stations on DirecTV. The stations are also available over the air with a decent antenna.

Sinclair, the second largest owner of television stations in the country, has 136 stations in 86 markets that reportedly will be impacted if a deal isn’t reached. A five-week extension in contract talks ends Friday.

 

[217 Forever]

Not sure why any sports fan would have Dish. They've been pulling this garbage for over a decade.

Sure does seem like Dish is the non-sports satellite service and Directv caters to the sports fan. Considering how much easier it is to stream non-sports content I think Directv is much better positioned of the two to hold on to subscribers.

 

[Blackhawkswincup]

 

[Negan4Coach]

Apparently the problem is with Fox, since they are no longer on a bunch of offerings, including Sling, which I had to cancel so I could watch Hurricanes games. I had to get Hulu, which is god-awful.

 

[IU Hawks fan]

Apparently the problem is with Fox, since they are no longer on a bunch of offerings, including Sling, which I had to cancel so I could watch Hurricanes games. I had to get Hulu, which is god-awful.

What's your issue with Hulu?

 

[Grudy0]

Apparently the problem is with Fox, since they are no longer on a bunch of offerings, including Sling, which I had to cancel so I could watch Hurricanes games. I had to get Hulu, which is god-awful.

Just wondering - Dish owns Sling, so why is the issue with Fox since Dish/Sling didn't sign the extension that would have kept them on both?

 

[Negan4Coach]

What's your issue with Hulu?

Its more expensive and doesn't let you watch on a TV at a location other than your primary residence.

Although from what I just figured out, you can apparently just switch your home of record back and forth as many times as you like without fear of retribution, and I also found out that I can watch Panthers games on Hulu so my opinion of the service has actually improved markedly in the last 24. But I miss Sling.