Charlie Ergen on Distant Networks
- Thread starter Scott Greczkowski
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Seems to me it would have been smarter to use this "influence" to have the SHVA rules written more in his favor.
No one was "elected" to become a pawn in this game. People are being shut-off right now, because Dish Network is trying to achieve some other goal. These people should be downright upset that Dish Network is playing some game while these customers still have another four weeks of distant networks.Tom Bombadil said:
I got a call from Dish-- I dont have locals but do have distants for now. The service folks indicated they were trying to shut folks off in batches to be able to better handle the calls coming in to them. So I don't think it is all a ploy. At this point ---I dont care--- I want to do whatever is necessary to support folks from losing their signals. Lets get a law and regulations that protect consumers and allow freedom of choice and speech.
If DISH could keep some of the markets that have many RVers and rural folks on CONUS--- that could help out some of the RVers and folks from losing their signals.
Many full time RVers can use any base to get their bills and mail and could tailor their base to meet their needs. We just need to know where to declare our base. Most states have RV mail services available. Pick out a couple East coast ones and Central and West.
If DISH could keep some of the markets that have many RVers and rural folks on CONUS--- that could help out some of the RVers and folks from losing their signals.
Many full time RVers can use any base to get their bills and mail and could tailor their base to meet their needs. We just need to know where to declare our base. Most states have RV mail services available. Pick out a couple East coast ones and Central and West.
We are angry. We are angry at E* for not presenting the waivers and grandfather status that the majority of their subscribers had to send them.
We are angry at a court system that decided an injunction was necessary because 20% of E* customers were illegally receiving distants and gave no out( other to move to Direct TV without compensation from E* nor relieving long term contracts with E*) to the 80% who legally had the rights to distants. What happened to the rights of the majority??
We are angry with Congressmen for taking funds from NAB lobbyists and making protectionism blatant in the TV Industry.
Many of us are calling E* and our congressmen to let them know we are angry.
We are angry of all the nay sayers on this forum. We would like to see their e-mails or call reports fighting for the majority who are losing distants.
You can get angry at as many people as you want to, but the bottom line is Charlie got caught allowing people to illegally get distants, and is being punished for it. The unfortunate thing is, all distant customers will pay the price for his greed.
Yes and I still do not see your e-mail or phone report to your congressmen to help "all distant customers will pay the price for his greed". Be proactive!!! In the time it takes to respond to this message you can make the call.
Anger Inventory
E* - very justified. The root of all of this.
The Courts - not justified. They interpret the law as written. If a judge ignores the law to fashion a remedy that is popular, it is malfeasance.
Congress - justified depending on your point of view. To simply dismiss the law as the product of the evil NAB is silly. There are a number of interested parties and all sought and seek to influence how the law looks. Nothing wrong with this. You simply need to get a bigger voice. Form the Americans for Unlimited Distant Networks and lobby for what you want.
Looking beyond the current situation, here is what will happen. Congress will amend the law, allowing E* to resume DNS under limited circumstances and after paying a hefty "fee" of $10's of millions. The only groups that will "need" DNS are the RV'ers and truckers. The "DNS because my locals suck" crowd will not receive a sympathetic hearing by anyone. E* (and D*) will be compelled have 100% LIL (analog first, then digital) by a date certain or will lose authority for certain services. The economic feasibility of getting Glendive up is not relevant. This is a public policy decision. Do you really think it costs the same to deliver a letter across town vs to Hawaii? Subsidies to promote universal service/coverage are time-honored tradition.
E* - very justified. The root of all of this.
The Courts - not justified. They interpret the law as written. If a judge ignores the law to fashion a remedy that is popular, it is malfeasance.
Congress - justified depending on your point of view. To simply dismiss the law as the product of the evil NAB is silly. There are a number of interested parties and all sought and seek to influence how the law looks. Nothing wrong with this. You simply need to get a bigger voice. Form the Americans for Unlimited Distant Networks and lobby for what you want.
Looking beyond the current situation, here is what will happen. Congress will amend the law, allowing E* to resume DNS under limited circumstances and after paying a hefty "fee" of $10's of millions. The only groups that will "need" DNS are the RV'ers and truckers. The "DNS because my locals suck" crowd will not receive a sympathetic hearing by anyone. E* (and D*) will be compelled have 100% LIL (analog first, then digital) by a date certain or will lose authority for certain services. The economic feasibility of getting Glendive up is not relevant. This is a public policy decision. Do you really think it costs the same to deliver a letter across town vs to Hawaii? Subsidies to promote universal service/coverage are time-honored tradition.
You won't either. As a business person, I want to advertise on a local station and reach local residents. If I live in Kansas City and advertise on a the KC ABC station and residents of KC are watching the program I am advertising on, from an LA station, I am not reaching them when the local spot comes up for my commercial.
I think the networks should get together with E* & D* and expand the network boundaries and spot beams, so that every area of the country is covered by the CLOSEST network station. That way there is no need for distant stations and the problem goes away.
I would be more incline to call or email a congressman and recommend the above, rather than ask them to continue to support Charlie's illegal activities.
The rights of the majority? Those only occur either from Congress (to pass a bill) or the Supreme Court (on a decision).odbrv said:
Look, I can continue this again in longform. But I'll try to keep this short, and bolded to make a specific point.
Dish Network was found guilty in the District of Southern Florida Circuit Court in 2003. The punishment was to requalify everyone.
Dish Network didn't like this medicine, so they appealed to try an get the case thrown out. The affiliate boards, the same four affiliate boards that tried to settle, cross-appealed stating the punishment wasn't severe enough.
It was at this very point that Dish Network could have appealed to save everyone that deserved to be paid.
Instead, Dish Network completely threw caution into the wind.
Charlie Ergen played his poker hand out. Instead, Ergen should have folded at that point, because the risk was worse than the reward.
Your anger should be directed 100 percent at Dish Network.
Right now people have options on whether or not to lobby Congress on behalf of E*. For example, I have that choice. I can elect to be Charlie's pawn, to do his bidding, buy into his strategy, call my representative and/or senator. Ignore that he has been purposely violating the rules, against a court ruling, for the past 3 years.
I think it is pretty clear that this has always been Charlie's fall back strategy. He ignore the ruling and did what he wanted. Figuring that either those making the ruling would succumb to public pressure, or that he could buy his way out at the end, or failing that, having hundreds of thousands of people contacting their representatives to influence changes in the law.
I think that he calculated the odds of one of these positive things happening was high enough to take the risk of losing. I suspect he is rather surprised that he might lose in the end - although that is still not certain. And it's a rather large loss, as he could end up losing tens of thousands of subscribers.
I still find it fascinating to watch him work the angles.
I don't completely agree with this assessment, Dish did made mistake and they were ready to pay fine. All but 25 stations which is owned by fo
which inturn by Direct) refused, now that says all to me. They are not getting off the hook anyway as they still have to pay fine.you solution does not address RV and truckers-- closest market is a moving target - and still think there should be a choice for those near small markets-- those stations tend to run paid advertising all the time -- we should always have choices in a free market.
I don't completely agree with this assessment, Dish did made mistake and they were ready to pay fine. All but 25 stations which is owned by fo
There was no fine. One of Charlie's fall back plans was that he would be able to pay off the networks to buy the rights, once he lost in court and after he continued to violate the rules. That was a gamble on his part. When he attempted to use "Plan B" it failed when Fox declined to accept his payment.
Fox (and D*) didn't have that much to gain by accepting the payoff. I can't imagine if the tables had been turned that Charlie would have given up his court-ordered advantage over D* for a relatively small payoff.
I also suspect that Charlie fully expected them to reject his payment.
Friend said:I don't completely agree with this assessment, Dish did made mistake and they were ready to pay fine. All but 25 stations which is owned by fo
I have been posting up a storm when it comes to this misconception. And there are some important declarations that are missed:Tom Bombadil said:
There was no fine.
A decision was handed down from the District Court of Southern Florida, in mid-2003. Dish Network was going to have to requalify all of their distant network customers, and would be forced to cut-off all customers within Grade A broadcast range (an injunction).
Dish Network didn't like the verdict, so they appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Dish Network felt the verdict was too harsh.
Because the network affiliate boards of ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC didn't like Dish Network's appeal, the affilate boards cross-appealed stating the punishment of a requalification wasn't harsh enough.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals received the case in August, 2003. The same court issued their ruling in May, 2006. The bench on the appellate court sided with the network affiliate boards: Dish Network was now found to have committed a pattern or practice of willful infringment on a nationwide basis, for which the remedy in the law is a permanent injunction.
No matter if Dish Network wanted to throw $15 billion at all the networks, there was no way a settlement could be reached because the injunction is the only course of action in the law, and because the Court of Appeals mandated that the District Court issue the injunction.
And yes, this next statement is true:
If everyone settled, the judge could not accept the settlement as both the law states and the Appeals Court mandated that the injunction be issued.
It was way too late for a settlement.
Is this a tune change Greg? IMHO, the court could have looked at the law and could have seen that there were flaws in this law, and could have decided differently based on reasonable concerns. Now days reason doesn't seem that important to some.
The NAB and Cable Companies were victors in their support for enactment of this law, an act that was supposed to benefit satellite home viewers. This act is flawed and needs repair. It is biased to broadcasters and not the home viewers. Between Nov. 01 and Dec. 01 more of us will have to tolerate the inept service of our local broadcasters, especially in the smaller the markets (the poorer TV stations) that are worse in quality than are the larger ones.
Mr. Bimson is quite capable of defending himself, I only write to express utter amazement at the lack of knowledge (AKA ignorance) about the American system of government. It is not the role of a judge to second guess a legislature about the provision of a law except to the extent such a provision offends the constitution. I also think that the law is flawed (i.e. is not exactly what I would have written) but the place to fix that is the Congress. Isn't Civics taught anymore? This is scary.
Mr. Brimson still says it is all E* fault. You are more correct. The original problem was in Congress creating a law that many found too biased toward the NAB. I agree that E* did a poor job in defending themselves by not producing ample evidence of waivers and grandfathering to protect its customers. The court then punished E* via the Congress made law that had no protection for end customers such as contract relief or equipment repurchase penalties. So I say the real culprit for my current loss of distant networks is Congress and lack of capital to restart with D*.. Congress did exactly what they were paid to do by NAB lobbyists. I hope you all vote against members of Congress who voted for this travesty.
Let's just say that I've held pretty much the same tune from the get-go. When the settlement was first announced, I was happy it was over. Then I re-read the ruling and said, "wait a minute, I don't think this settlement will be ratified as Judge Dimitrouleas must issue the permanent injunction because it was the only remedy for the defined judgment and it was mandated by the Circuit Court upon remand to the judge.boy921 said:
Once the judge's order and explanation were posted, it was very apparent that once the Court of Appeals ruled that Dish Network was blatantly infringing and there was only one remedy to be handed back to the District Court to issue, that any settlement would have had to occur before the Appeals Court issued their decision.
In other words, until May 2006, Dish Network could have ended this. Instead, Dish Network fought so hard that they:
A) risked all of their distant networks subscribers;
B) are now being proactive by cutting off distant network susbscribers before the injunction is even active, simply to use their subscribers in some sick game of chess in hopes Congress will revisit the issue.
FLAWS? Courts don't look at flaws in a law. They apply the law as it is written, especially when there are mandatory penalties which must be followed.boy921 said:
You seem to have forgotten that Dish Network presented evidence in court that their "qualified" subscriber list had over 20 percent of the subscribers as illegal. More damning, however, is the fact that Dish Network's "qualified" list didn't have those subscribers with waivers or grandfathering status on it. Therefore, Dish Network presented no evidence to the court on those people, and now almost 40 to 50 percent of the subscribers are illegal.
So tell me if the courts didn't do their job. Dish Network certainly didn't to theirs in court.
So, when was this law created?odbrv said:
Well, let's see...odbrv said:
The law was signed by the President, as bill passed by both houses of Congress.
President Reagan is dead. The Democrats were in control of both houses. So, most of the members that were around in 1988 are long gone.
Funny how the three largest satellite companies all used this law to serve people with network channels, and all three companies tried to reach an agreement with the industry to stop violating copyright law.
Of course, none of those companies were around when the law was implemented in 1988. Maybe those companies just didn't care if they violated the law simply because it would help expand their businesses faster if they gave everyone the channels that are most popular, and damn the qualifications.
It certainly appears that way.
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