As Charlie said back in Dec., it's probably inevitable that the nation's two satellite TV service merge at some point. I doubt they try to do it for awhile longer though as DirecTV is now being managed by a new joint venture group co-owned by AT&T and a hedge fund, TPG, which bought a 30% stake in the business. That deal isn't going to close until the latter half of this year and then it will take the new board awhile to formulate and implement plans to try to improve DirecTV's prospects.
But my gut says that they'll aim to get it in better shape so that it can fetch a better price for a sale, maybe a couple years or so from now. I doubt DISH themselves would be the buyer as they and their cash are occupied with 5G. Instead, it would probably be a third party (like TPG or another investor group) that would buy both DirecTV and DISH in order to merge them. Or perhaps both businesses would be spun off from their parent companies (well, DirecTV already IS being spun out from AT&T into a separate group) and merged in a new joint venture that would be jointly owned by DISH, AT&T and TPG.
Everyone knows that DirecTV and DISH are both declining assets with subscriber bases that will only ever decrease. But they'll still be around for years, and will continue to generate a lot of cash. So the question for whoever owns and manages them is how to reduce their costs, run them more efficiently, make them more profitable, and ensure that they have enough subscribers to remain a viable business for as long as possible before that day, some years down the road, when satellite TV in the US finally goes dark.