I agree with you 100%. The price of the average cable/sat bundle has reached the tipping point. Anymore increases on top of what they are already charging will just speed up the defections. That is why I see DISH trying to make smaller bundles in a way to stay some of the losses. Now how they reach that right combo of channels , I'm sure will be dictated by the channel providers like Viacom, Disney etc. Now I have said for YEARS that DISH could cut some of their losses by reducing and or ELIMINATING some of their various made up , charge them because they can DISH FEES. Will it reduce some of their profits? YES, but so will the continual loss of subs due to cord cutting and regular churn. Now in their latest promo for new subs , I see DISH has done just that. No DVR fees for two years, NO charge for HD or locals etc. PRICE locked for two years at $49.99. IF DISH would cut their dvr fees down to a reasonable amount or completely eliminate them , that might stay some of their losses for a short while,but eventually the prices that the channel companies are charging for their continual carriage will be what completely destroys the current dieing model. Eventually DISH will have to make changes or they will die, just like the rest of the cable industry.
Ala cart is what people want and they have been saying that for years. YES, You will pay more for the channels you want, but their will be no more spreading the costs and subsidizing of ESPN over all the cable and sat subs by placing them in the lowest programming packs. Sports is over priced and they need to be spun off into their own premium pack, just like the premium movie packs. If you like sports , you pay for them. If that means we end up with a whole lot of smaller niche channels going away, I'm all for it. I've said before that there is little to NO original content produced by them and mostly infomercials and reruns from nework tv. I could get by with about just my locals and about 15 channels myself. In fact if you could pay by the show , instead of the channels , I could get by with a whole lot less . If something doesn't change , the entire present day bundle will collapse in the next 5 years and there will be more buyouts, mergers till there are even less tv companies than we have today. I predict that DISH will be one of them .
Charlie has boxed himself into a corner with all his prior broken mergers and cooperation deals with various companies. His conduct in these deals has doomed DISH from working with just about all the big companies. His reputation precedes him and he is well reviled in the industry. He has all that bandwith that he will have to sell now ,since the T-mobile merger is effectively DEAD. His words not mine - due to the FCC decision to not count the discount for their purchase. With no cell phone company to partner with , DISH has no future as a sat company . If broadband starts to grow and reach the rural country , even satellite won't be needed in those areas. Now if DISH concentrates on making SLING tv the best with dvr or cloud services and makes the SLING app available on all the tvs and media streaming boxes, they might be able to segue into internet delivered media and just use the satellites and resources to pump that company up -including locals and or sports etc. But that would mean refocusing all their attention on that venture and let the present day satellite service continue to die out -and it will just like the big C-band sat service did.
The times are a changing and unfortunately DISH needs to change too , if they want to survive in some incarnation.
