jegrant,
Funny you should mention this... I was thinking just the other day that the addition of new satellites and MPEG4 service for E* coincides with the apparent shift of SA to IPTV. Since E* will have all this capacity across several orbital slots, it doesn't seem too big a stretch for them to create another package for religious programming and include several of the current SA channels.
Consider what they have done to add international programming over the past few years. This doesn't get as much press as the HD channels or their mainstream secular packages, but it must be worth all the expansion. I just don't think it would take a lot to create one or more religious packages in the same manner.
No matter what happens over the next couple of years, there is certainly a lot of interesting stuff going on in the satellite TV/radio sectors. Along those same lines, I would not be surprised to see the SIRIUS/XM merger get denied and then have DirecTV acquire XM and Echostar acquire SIRIUS. But I digress...
Going in an entirely different direction, now that E* has a forecast surplus of satellites they might consider it in their best interests to offer one of their less capable satellites for sale to Dominion. Possibly even at a different orbital location in exchange for the Dominion licenses at 61.5.
There are just too many variables and possibilities (however slight) to make any sort of solid prediction. But it sure is entertaining to speculate!
Whatever happens, I would like to see SA succeed at their
original mission - to spread the gospel to the world. It used to be that Satellite TV was the path to the goal. Perhaps that has changed. I'm also glad to see the GloryStar option out there.
Cheers,
Red