Could Someone Please Explain How & Why Dish/Echo Is In Its Present Situation?

[skyviewmark]

It does "seem" especially if you watch the Charlie Chats, that E* is still run like a startup company like the one I used to work for, run on a shoestring budget with production enterprise servers built out of old workstation parts that were lying around, until there were enough paying customers to afford to buy real servers.

By the way, I still work for that company, but unlike E*'s "perception" with growth we improved the way things operate.

Again, this is just the way things appear to me, it very well could be a professionally run operation disguised as a two-bit one.

You and I think alike..
Every time I envision Echostar and Charlie, I see him broadcasting Charlie Chat out of his garage. "Hey Candi can you move you car, I gotta do another one of them Charlie Chat things"

Needless to say Echostar has never looked like a real business to me.. Maybe that's what they want us to think

 

[Slamminc11]

You and I think alike..
Every time I envision Echostar and Charlie, I see him broadcasting Charlie Chat out of his garage. "Hey Candi can you move you car, I gotta do another one of them Charlie Chat things"

Needless to say Echostar has never looked like a real business to me.. Maybe that's what they want us to think

23,000 employees, 14 million customers, more profitable quarters than Directv, constant subscriber growth quarter after quarter...
Pretty impressive facade of a real business if you ask me!

 

[mdonnelly]

Underestimate Charlie at your own risk.

 

[nelson61]

I think they made a decision a year or two ago to change their business plan and concentrate more on being a content provider. That decision led to spinning off Echostar and some of the satellites and leasing capacity back. Then they leased Aniq F3 at 118.7 which does a great job ( lower power, but Conus and one special lnb does both 119/118.7) Then they cut a deal with Ciel for 129 to lease 1/2 it's capacity and may end up with all of it if Canadian providers don't lease the remaining space. Then, they did a deal with Telsat at 72.5 to take 1/2 of the new Nimiq satellite going there. They then cut a deal with Quezat to use part of 77 and may have a deal perking for part of the new Quezat satellite going up in a couple more years. Now, we read that Ciel is offering leases on their new Ciel 4 at 138 which dish will likely jump on and abandon 148.

I think they are spreading the risk out over a bunch of leased capacity that can cover east and west and will maintain a core of high power satellites at the core Conus 110 and 119 locations. It will be a robust system when complete but they sure are in a risky position during the transition with all the failures and old satellites.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Underestimate Charlie at your own risk.

One could counter with:

"Overestimate Charlie at your own risk"

 

[FCom911]

This is the type of dialogue I was hoping for when posing the question...

Charlie Ergen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BTW, I guess I shouldn't be surprised (but I am), Charlie is around the 34th richest person in the world with a net worth of $9.1 Billion (Wikipedia) .

As others have commented, he comes off as both unpolished as well as unfocused; Charlie Chats are painful to watch, at times... as he seems uniformed as to the workings of his own organization... Reminiscent of 'Wayne's World' (SNL), yet unamusing.

It's pretty hard to argue about a man who's net worth is $9.1 billion... as he can be who ever, what ever, when ever, he wants to be

 

[Hall]

23,000 employees, 14 million customers, more profitable quarters than Directv, constant subscriber growth quarter after quarter...
Pretty impressive facade of a real business if you ask me!

No sh*t ! I wonder people around consider to be a successful business if Dish isn't ?

 

[DishSubLA]

Charlie's strategy from day one was to acquire just about every DBS slot and as many frequencies as he could. This, in my opinion, was designed to prevent competition, and it succeeded. Furthermore his purchase of Kelly TV back in the 90's (and their sat licences allowed him to provide foreign language services years before others and that extra money crucial during the 90's when they barely had 1 million subs. In order to keep these and the more recent sat slots, this meant that Dish has to actually have a satellite providing services at all those locations. This meant having to spread out his fleet of 10 sats. While there is some risk to this, it was everything to Dish's survival as it did, indeed, in my opinion, prevent other companies (back in the 90's when it could have been done and even today) from competitors from starting up a DBS service. But Charlie also had a vision of providing more channels and saw HD as the future long before Direct TV

Direct TV, meanwhile, for a long time, just didn't see DBS ever being able to compete with cable, and focused on their primary DBS slot at 101 (they had a few licenses at 110 and 119) and ignored Dish. The old Hughes management had no long-term vision. It was Charlie who created the DBS revolution by unleashing his equipment provided for free deals (the cable model) by first offering rebates for 1 TV service, then later no rebate hassle, just a commitment for 4 TV service. Charlie poached millions of cable customers while Direct TV did nothing to respond for 2 years because the Direct model did not allow for it to manufacture its own equipment in the mass numbers Echostar was doing, and Direct TV was simply a more expensive system for the company to run, they had higher costs while Dish could afford the giveaways and lower monthly bills from customers because Dish had designed a far more efficient system to operate. To go from 0 subs with all the press saying Charlie and Dish would FAIL and be out of business within a few months because Direct TV had the head start with over 5 million subs and even Rupert Murdoch lost faith by backing out of a deal to merge with Dish, yet to reach this point today of over 13 million subs, a very healthy company with with good cash liquidity for years now, would seem to indicate that Dish is doing OK.

The "situation" today regarding the sat fleet is not all that dire. It is simply a convergence of the fleet's age and the AMC failure. Direct TV has had their own satellite failures and anomalies, but since they had focused on 101 (Charlie had eaten up all the other good U.S. DBS slots) it doesn't become as tight as it is for Dish's far flung DBS fleet. This is a bump on the road for Dish, actually the first one, really. The timing is not in their favor at the moment, just as things really were a mess at Direct TV for quite a while until NewCorp fixed things and now Liberty seems to know what to do with DBS, as well.

Quite frankly, Dish has faced far more dire challenges in its history, the greatest challenge was day one of operations against the more wealthy Direct TV. Believe me, if they can flourish against that challenge, Dish can survive anything. Dish has not slowed down satellite development and launches in its entire existence, but it has a lot of slots to fill.

One more thing that presented better timing for Direct TV was that the spaceway fleet was originally designed to function for satellite broadband internet because that is where the old Hughes management felt the future was for DBS. Then breaking months of silence, Charlie Ergan announced that Dish was no longer putting any significant resources into broadband via satellite and instead would focus on HD, as he believed that was the future. BUT WAIT! 1 week later, Direct TV makes an even more stunning announcement: They decided to chuck all that broadband via satellite plans out the window and focus on HD instead. WHAT A COINCIDENCE! This is just one example of why Dish is so SECRETIVE of its plans. They don't want Direct or cable to get a jump on them. The manufacture of the Spaceways had already started, giving Direct TV an immediate head start for HD sats instead of having to take the time of designing new ones and build them, etc.

This is the first bad timing in all of Dish Networks existence. It is temporary, and it will all work itself out, just as it did for Direct TV. And Charlie Ergan is back in the saddle of the daily operations at Dish Network. His "sabbatical" of supervising the split of Dish and Echostar is now over. His absence at the day-to-day operations at Dish did hurt, and it was his worst quarters in a long time.

Customers can't tell any difference in the operations of Dish and have no clue as to all the multi-slot pressures. Dish still has reasonably healthy satellites sleeping that can be moved and used if it ever really becomes necessary. Good heavens, we were served by the sickly Echo 4 for YEARS at 110, and the sleeping sats are in MUCH better health. This "situation" really is not going to impact the vast majority of subs because they will never know of it.

 

[guapoharry]

This is the type of dialogue I was hoping for when posing the question...

What would that be? Fear, uncertainty and doubt?

The beginning of this thread contained no description of the "present situation" other than emotional perceptions, like:

I just don't understand their posturing - its so damn risky!

I wouldn't be pushing things so far

One would think investors would be worried?

On a razor's edge?

Then finally after some prodding:

The Echo fleet, its age, failures... it isn't healthy. Why gamble so much on pushing SATs to their estimated age. It doesn't appear DirecTV waits as long to refresh their fleet. They appear to operate more - pro-actively.

C'mon, when you make a huge investment in a satellite, you operate it to make that investment pay back as much as possible. If you didn't operate your fleet into old age, your stockholders would have grounds to think you were failing to exercise due diligence or just plain incompetent.

As others have commented, he comes off as both unpolished as well as unfocused; Charlie Chats are painful to watch, at times... as he seems uniformed as to the workings of his own organization... Reminiscent of 'Wayne's World' (SNL), yet unamusing.

Do you suppose people would be happier if the somewhat internal look people get into E* was replaced by phony-baloney marketing prevaricators who attempt to blow sunshine up one's pant leg? From what I see here, definitely.

I for one, find the Charlie Chats refreshingly absent of excessive public relations snake oil. Wayne's World? Baloney.

Look at events ifrom the beginning of the space race. (look for the word "failure") These things we take for granted, like rockets and satellites are complicated, and not without problems. In a matter of speaking, a rockets use a controlled explosion of fuel to propel themselves. Considering this, failures will continue to happen from time to time.

D* fanboys and E* fanboys in forums like this are competing for dominance by doing their own posturing. Could it be that people are taking them too seriously?

Everyone take a deep breath, OK?

 

[vegassatellite]

Here's how I see it. D11 just went up recently, as did E11. So both have launched just about as many satellites over the years. If you consider DISH's leasing of other birds, DISH has been running more satellites than DirecTV so you can't rightly accuse DISH of falling behind on getting metal up in space.

The real difference between DISH and DirecTV is that DISH has to maintain more orbital slots. Very early on, DISH acquired 110 and had to maintain two orbital slots while DirecTV maintained one. Also, DISH has 148 and 61.5. So that's a lot of slots to keep birds going in. DirecTV did expand to 119 and 110 and 72.5. Before KAKU, DirecTV only needed to maintain those orbital slots. However, around that same time, DISH was now at 148, 129, 119, 110, 121, 105, 61.5, and they even have E4 at 77. DISH also had some early problems with E4 being basically a total loss from an insurance standpoint, E5 is fairly weak, etc. Add to that the failure of AMC14 and now E2, and DISH has had a lot of bird problems despite trying to maintain a large portion of the sky. Only recently has DirecTV really gotten up to 5 slots on 1 dish and if I recall, one of those slots didn't have a bird for a good while.

DirecTV acquired two birds early on with the purchase of Tempo assets, including Tempo 1 and Tempo 2, now DTV 5 and 6. It takes time to build satellites and I think all the launch facilities are booked up right now so getting replacements birds is not an immediate thing to be resolved. DISH is spread thin with an aging fleet across many orbital slots. DirecTV, OTOH, has gained a few extra birds from purchases and hasn't been as aggressive in acquiring new orbital slots so they don't have to spread all those birds all over the sky.

If Charlie can hold firm and get the next few birds up in the sky without too much more trouble with their existing fleet, they can be well positioned to gain capacity over DirecTV and offer more services. Charlie is smart about lining up arrangements with other services such as TeleSat, etc., whereas DirecTV hasn't really pursued such arrangements.

 

[Hemi 6.1]

more profitable quarters than Directv,

Yea OK!

 

[FCom911]

What would that be? Fear, uncertainty and doubt?

The beginning of this thread contained no description of the "present situation" other than emotional perceptions, like...

Anyone can read between the lines, can come up with almost anything one wants to find fault and squawk about, as apparently, you have...

I simply want to be enlightened... I have questions and observations too...

Perhaps, you're misunderstanding what I meant, when I said:

This is the type of dialogue I was hoping for when posing the question...

Perchance, I should have been more detailed in the aforementioned statement, as I was referring to all comments presented throughout this entire string; conversations, comments, and observations are enlightening, eye opening, and yes... even controversial, at times. I've personally learned a lot since posing the original question. That was my sole purpose... I like to learn about what makes things tick...

The sole purpose of this string was to solicit insight. But, in all fairness, I was alluding to reliability issues of 129's E5 as I am an HD Only client, EA's collapse, and recent E2 failure... It just seems an awful lot of bad luck coming down all at once, and my thoughts were... could some of this been avoided by acting more proactively?

If you're trying to find fault or a fight, which it appears you obviously want to do, while I believe you've skipped reading the entire string, and all postings, you're not going to have a clear picture of what people's posturing is, have said, think, and are asking... you end up with a distorted picture... and by doing so, you're not going to start a pissing match, here.

In your defense, I'll admit, some strings become so long, controversial, and convoluted, it's difficult to read everything. But with that said, one must exercise caution not to insight wrongful accusations against any poster, if one is not completely knowledgeable of all posts made by all individuals, as I believe — you just exhibited.

In other words, your flaming, defensive posturing, is not necessary (aka, kstuart)... This is an environment and exercise of discovery, observations, and possible prediction.

Let's keep it that way.

 

[FCom911]

23,000 employees, 14 million customers, more profitable quarters than Directv, constant subscriber growth quarter after quarter...
Pretty impressive facade of a real business if you ask me!

In all fairness, Dish's last quarter, regarding subs, ended with attrition, not gain... it was purportedly reported, Dish after all additions and cancelations, Dish had a net loss of clients (SkyReport). But, Dish does continue to show profits where others are in the red, or are simply struggling... just how long Dish's financial growth will continue, in this present economic climate, is anyone's guess...

 

[Slamminc11]

Yea OK!

Umm, yeah. They have!

 

[Slamminc11]

In all fairness, Dish's last quarter, regarding subs, ended with attrition, not gain... it was purportedly reported, Dish after all additions and cancelations, Dish had a net loss of clients (SkyReport). But, Dish does continue to show profits where others are in the red, or are simply struggling... just how long Dish's financial growth will continue, in this present economic climate, is anyone's guess...

Actually Dish added 35,000 net customers. Not a big number compared to other quarters over the last few years, but still a + number.

 

[Tyralak]

BTW, does IMO imply I'm being some sort of jerk? I'm really seeking some logic, not just trying to chew the fat. If 129 does go, I'll have to go.

IMO= In My Opinion

 

[Hemi 6.1]

Actually Dish added 35,000 net customers. Not a big number compared to other quarters over the last few years, but still a + number.

And a much lower number then directv added. http://dtv.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=308693
275,000 new customers in the first quarter, is much higher then 35,000. Thats just USA customers. 475,000 total. Lets see E* 1st quarter results.

 

[Hemi 6.1]

OK here's E* 1st quarter results.
DISH Network Corporation - DISH Network Reports First Quarter 2008 Financial Results
Now who has higher numbers again?

 

[harshness]

In all fairness, Dish's last quarter, regarding subs, ended with attrition, not gain...

The DISH 2008 Q1 Form10-q states that net additions was .035 million. Because the number was positive a net gain is indicated, not a net loss.

You need to pick your sources more carefully or learn how to better interpret the numbers.

 

[harshness]

OK here's E* 1st quarter results.
DISH Network Corporation - DISH Network Reports First Quarter 2008 Financial Results

Paragraph 3.