Dish Continues to Lose Pay-TV Subscribers

[Yespage]

What I find interesting is they gained 638,000 subs over the last three months, but lost 719,000 over the same period.

 

[bobvick]

I wonder if Dish DBS is now trying to focus more on "good" subscribers, I.E. trying to keep good paying, long term customers, rather than dangling a carrot and catching the low hanging fruit from subs that will swap between Dish, DirecTv, and cable/telco (if available). Appears that their average revenue per sub has increased quite a bit since last quarter. Of course there was the advantage of a full quarters worth of the price increase in this report. They just do not seem to be as aggressive at offering incentives to new subs and in marketing the Hopper, wireless Joey, and Sling technology as they should.

 

[Lue]

I wonder if Dish DBS is now trying to focus more on "good" subscribers, I.E. trying to keep good paying, long term customers, rather than dangling a carrot and catching the low hanging fruit from subs that will swap between Dish, DirecTv, and cable/telco (if available). Appears that their average revenue per sub has increased quite a bit since last quarter. Of course there was the advantage of a full quarters worth of the price increase in this report. They just do not seem to be as aggressive at offering incentives to new subs and in marketing the Hopper, wireless Joey, and Sling technology as they should.

Running the Price Lock 49.99 package real hard on ESPN 190 channels with hopper

http://www.dish.com/35th-anniversary-special-offer/

39 bucks for one year 290 channels
http://www.dish.com/introductory-savings-offer/

 

[ChadT41]

I wonder if Dish DBS is now trying to focus more on "good" subscribers, I.E. trying to keep good paying, long term customers, rather than dangling a carrot and catching the low hanging fruit from subs that will swap between Dish, DirecTv, and cable/telco (if available). Appears that their average revenue per sub has increased quite a bit since last quarter. Of course there was the advantage of a full quarters worth of the price increase in this report. They just do not seem to be as aggressive at offering incentives to new subs and in marketing the Hopper, wireless Joey, and Sling technology as they should.

They have a 2 year price lock, no DVR fee and free Netflix for a year... They are being pretty aggressive at getting new subs(those are NC prices only...)

 

[pattykay]

They have a 2 year price lock, no DVR fee and free Netflix for a year... They are being pretty aggressive at getting new subs(those are NC prices only...)

Those prices are only available in North Carolina?

 

[ChadT41]

New Connect

 

[Lue]

I wonder if Dish DBS is now trying to focus more on "good" subscribers, I.E. trying to keep good paying, long term customers, rather than dangling a carrot and catching the low hanging fruit from subs that will swap between Dish, DirecTv, and cable/telco (if available). Appears that their average revenue per sub has increased quite a bit since last quarter. Of course there was the advantage of a full quarters worth of the price increase in this report. They just do not seem to be as aggressive at offering incentives to new subs and in marketing the Hopper, wireless Joey, and Sling technology as they should.

Dish Chief Executive Charlie Ergen argues that putting Sling and satellite customers in one pile reflects the company’s philosophy that all customers are worth about the same. “You really don’t care where you get a video customer,” he said in today's earnings call. “We’re paying the programmer the same, and we get a Sling customer or we get a Dish customer, and they both have ESPN. We just write the check to ESPN.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-05/is-dish-hiding-the-good-news-about-sling-tv-

Stuffed enough already
TV networks are stuffing more and more ads into the commercial breaks in a 'desperate' attempt to counter plummeting ratings

http://www.businessinsider.com/bern...tv-networks-are-increasing-ad-stuffing-2015-8

 

[MikeD-C05]

I think that all this is moving us more and more to ala cart and Or smaller more affordable bundles of channels. The present day cable/sat bundle will be going away by the end of this decade if not sooner. The people are speaking with their wallets. Espn will have to learn to make it with out gouging everybody , regardless of whether they watch them or not.

 

[Mochuf]

I bet Dish will add a "cloud" DVR option at sometime for SlingTV.

I said a real dvr.

Just because it is "in the cloud" doesn't mean you'll get to have unrestricted access to it.

Exactly right. And more than likely with some networks wanting an expiration date on recordings.

 

[Mochuf]

When everything is on demand, you won't have to record anything anymore so that's going to disappear.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25957292/roku-ceo-its-pretty-clear-that-all-tv

Want to know something else, your recordings will disappear too. You won't be allowed to keep anything you want as long as you want (no EHD's allowed). There will be expiration dates on cloud recordings. Now if you want them to be around a little longer, you can buy them for $2.99 per episode.

 

[bobvick]

I said a real dvr.


Exactly right. And more than likely with some networks wanting an expiration date on recordings.

And I highly doubt they will ever offer one for SlingTV since part of that model is simplification, they probably do not want to design and produce a STB just for that, when they can just have an app, and you can have a "cloud" DVR at a future date when ever they develop the technology or offer the service.

 

[Yespage]

I think that all this is moving us more and more to ala cart and Or smaller more affordable bundles of channels. The present day cable/sat bundle will be going away by the end of this decade if not sooner. The people are speaking with their wallets. Espn will have to learn to make it with out gouging everybody , regardless of whether they watch them or not.

Less speaking with their wallets and more being pushed away by the price getting out of hand.

 

[harshness]

Dish Chief Executive Charlie Ergen argues that putting Sling and satellite customers in one pile reflects the company’s philosophy that all customers are worth about the same.

What it reflects to me is that the Sling TV customers were largely pirated from DISH.

 

[whitewolf8214]

Is Dish Hiding the Good News About Sling TV? http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dish-hiding-good-news-sling-195400827.html

When Dish launched an Internet television service earlier this year, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that some customers would cancel their expensive satellite hookups in favor of this new, cheaper alternative. That shift to Sling TV is probably happening, but Dish isn’t making it easy to decipher. The company's quarterly earnings on Wednesday included a report on how many people have signed up for Sling TV—sort of. Dish decided to include paying Sling customers in its overall subscriber numbers. Since Sling is growing and the satellite business is shrinking, lumping the two services together proves frustrating for anyone trying to determine how either side of the business is doing. The overall numbers aren't good—Dish lost 81,000 customers in the recent quarter, almost double the number from a year ago—but there's no way to untangle the combined tally to detect how many customers are defecting to the lower-cost option.

 

[iamfaust1]

Running the Price Lock 49.99 package real hard on ESPN 190 channels with hopper

http://www.dish.com/35th-anniversary-special-offer/

39 bucks for one year 290 channels
http://www.dish.com/introductory-savings-offer/

DISH might lose me, I am at the end of my 2 year contract at the end of this month. I saw the anniversary deal and reached out to ask if they could give me this deal. No dice only for existing customers, a DIRT member offered me a $15 discount for 10 months and said that was the best they could do.

So now I am considering leaving DISH even though I have been pleased with their service and the Hopper. It doesn't make any sense not offer existing customers the same deal. All of the equipment is already in place and the installation has been paid for. Maybe bobvick is right, DISH only wants "Good" subscribers. Maybe I'll come back is 60 days if they still have the anniversary special or maybe I'll go with DirectTV.

 

[TheKrell]

I highly doubt they will ever offer one for SlingTV since part of that model is simplification, they probably do not want to design and produce a STB just for that...

What about the Channel Master DVR+? Unless my memory is failing, Echostar designed and built it for Channel Master. And let's not forget the good ol' DTV Pal DVR; a great box in it's day with an Ethernet port that, to my knowledge, was never used.

 

[Yespage]

What it reflects to me is that the Sling TV customers were largely pirated from DISH.

Initially yes. But those may have been subs ready to head on off.

 

[Lue]

How many customers will Dish cannibalize from Dish?

The subscriber numbers are only going to get worse, much worse for the cable/sat big bundle models, you might as well get used to it because this is just the first inning.

Frontier (Dish owned) will snatch a good portion of Dish sat customers from this 1.3 million Prime RURAL customers
https://www.fcc.gov/document/connect-america-fund-expanding-broadband-13-m-frontier-customers

Starting in mid-2015, Frontier will market and deploy co-branded versions of TiVo's suite of whole-home products and services, including an industry-first deployment of the TiVo Roamio DVR with over-the-air (OTA) support as part of its video offering for residential and business customers across multiple markets. The TiVo Roamio DVR receives content both over-the-air and over the Internet.

The new partnership will enable Frontier's high-speed Internet customers to enjoy a consistent TV experience spanning major broadcast channels and over the top (OTT) content via TiVo's unified cloud-based service, a whole-home gateway DVR, TiVo Mini, TiVo Stream. Multi-screen and remote scheduling functionality will be available through TiVo Web, iOS and Android mobile applications. Frontier customers with high-speed Internet service will enjoy an all-in-one DVR, a broad line-up of over-the-top applications, and a variety of top-tier streaming video services via a high-quality streaming solution.

Broadband is making major headway into Dish's satellite served coveted rural markets.

http://pr.tivo.com/press-releases/f...ic-relationship-with-tivo-nasdaq-tivo-1177479

 

[bobvick]

How many customers will Dish cannibalize from Dish?

The subscriber numbers are only going to get worse, much worse for the cable/sat big bundle models, you might as well get used to it because this is just the first inning.

Frontier (Dish owned) will snatch a good portion of Dish sat customers from this 1.3 million Prime RURAL customers
https://www.fcc.gov/document/connect-america-fund-expanding-broadband-13-m-frontier-customers

Starting in mid-2015, Frontier will market and deploy co-branded versions of TiVo's suite of whole-home products and services, including an industry-first deployment of the TiVo Roamio DVR with over-the-air (OTA) support as part of its video offering for residential and business customers across multiple markets. The TiVo Roamio DVR receives content both over-the-air and over the Internet.

The new partnership will enable Frontier's high-speed Internet customers to enjoy a consistent TV experience spanning major broadcast channels and over the top (OTT) content via TiVo's unified cloud-based service, a whole-home gateway DVR, TiVo Mini, TiVo Stream. Multi-screen and remote scheduling functionality will be available through TiVo Web, iOS and Android mobile applications. Frontier customers with high-speed Internet service will enjoy an all-in-one DVR, a broad line-up of over-the-top applications, and a variety of top-tier streaming video services via a high-quality streaming solution.

Broadband is making major headway into Dish's satellite served coveted rural markets.

http://pr.tivo.com/press-releases/f...ic-relationship-with-tivo-nasdaq-tivo-1177479

I bet that "broadband" might not be enough for a lot of streaming. I live in a rural CenturyLink (legacy CenturyTel) area. 4.0 down is as fast as we can get here, and you can't stream HD with that, much less multiple streams. Besides, all 1.3 million are not going to dump Dish for it anyway. There are more people than not, especially right now, that do not want to rely on streaming exclusively to watch TV. Frontier will probably squander those funds anyway and get half assed broadband at about 1.5 for most people.

 

[Lue]

I bet that "broadband" might not be enough for a lot of streaming. I live in a rural CenturyLink (legacy CenturyTel) area. 4.0 down is as fast as we can get here, and you can't stream HD with that, much less multiple streams. Besides, all 1.3 million are not going to dump Dish for it anyway. There are more people than not, especially right now, that do not want to rely on streaming exclusively to watch TV. Frontier will probably squander those funds anyway and get half assed broadband at about 1.5 for most people.

The FCC has changed the definition of broadband
The minimum broadband download speeds now begin at 25Mbps, up from 4Mbps

Frontier owned by Dish will not get the funding from the fed unless the service is 25mbps or higher, new regs from Net Neutrality.

Just a 10% uptake of the NEW internet media will shake the media world to it's core, cannot you hear the rumblings in the market today?
First inning about over, there's 8 more to go, brace yourself.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-broadband-25mbps

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/frontier-targets-millennials-ott-over-air-video-trial/2015-05-29

Looking for new video growth opportunities, including OTT, makes sense for Frontier. During the first quarter, Frontier reported that it lost 7,700 customers, including 3,500 satellite video customers, to end the period with a total of 577,700 video customers.
Moving into online video and supporting online video streaming is also driving Frontier's investments in both its last mile broadband and backbone networks to give users enough capacity to access these services effectively