DISH Drops AMC Networks (AMC Back on DISH channel 131)
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Voom stopped delivering new programming for All of their Voom channels and showed about 4 programs a day , repeated over and over and over. This was a breech of the contract with DISH . They agreed to deliver new programming and failed. DISH dropped all the channels except for 5 of the best ones- like Monsters HD and told them to condense their programming on to the 5 remaining channels. Voom said NO all 20 channels or nothing! DISH said Okay :Nothing and dropped all of them. Voom was in the wrong from the beginning on this one. After the drop of the channels DISH added a lot of new cable channels in HD.
there are numerous times that I watch AMC & will be very disappointed if this channel is dropped. Could someone please list the CEO's email address so that we could voice our displeasure over this?
According to VOOM, Dish insisted (threatened) on these programming changes against their objections - see attached. VOOM later concluded this strategy was undertaken to lessen the overall value of the VOOM HD channels so Dish could attempt to force a better deal (i.e., retiering) with VOOM or reduce the outcry should Dish illegally terminate the affiliation agreement. These are not my words - they are VOOM's who made this argument in their amended complaint (May 2008) and several times along the way. So far, everything VOOM claimed in their initial complaint has been suppored by the tens of thousands of pages of artifacts filed with the NY Supreme Court (not the sealed or redacted ones). Moreover, they have been supported or, at the least, not disputed one iota by these artifacts. Every attempt by Dish Network to destroy or surpress evidence has been met with---for lack of a better term--being bitch-slapped by the courts.
As I mentioned from the start of this case there is plenty of blame to go around. However, the bottom line is that Dish signed a horrible 15-year contract and VOOM decided it was such as good contract (in their favor) that their business model would consist of bleeding Dish dry since actively marketing any of the VOOM channels to cable/satellite meant offering Dish most favorite nationed (the same deal or better) terms. In other words, bleeding Dish Network made them the most money for the least risk. Back in 2005 Dish decided to pay VOOM a premium price for all 15 VOOM HD channels through the year 2020...however, HD was no longer a premium service after year three. This was mistake #1 for Dish. The other big mistake Dish made was assuming that VOOM would eventually be mass marketed to MSVPs just like the other Rainbow Media channels such as AMC, WE, IFC, etc. As mentioned, there was no motivaition for VOOM to do so since they stood to make billions off of Dish Network by meeting the spend and programming requirements (I believe Section 4 and 10 of the affiliation agreement). IMO, we all know VOOM is going to win this case...it's just a matter of how much $$$ it is going to cost Dish for illegally terminating the affiliation agreement. Dish is hoping that it was cheaper in the long-run to break the contract than to pay VOOM another 12-years under the affiliation agreement. They were probably initially correct...until the Judge ruled Dish was guilty of destroying evidence. The jury will be instructed they are free to presume that any evidence detroyed during this 6-month period would have been detrimental to Dish and, in fact, supported VOOM's case. The jury is free to evaluate this evidence (or lack thereof) however they wish...and it will certainly be a factor when it comes to awarding punitive damages.
Back in 2008 I though VOOM would wind-up getting 500-700M from Dish in this case. Why? VOOM simply hadno reason not to comply with the terms and conditions of the affiliation agreement. Seriously, it's like your brother says to you...hey, if you give me $10 a week for the next year I'll give you $200 at the end of year one, $300 the following year, $400 at the end of year three, $500 the year after that, $1000 after year five, and a final $2000 payment after year six. Why and flying F would VOOM not meet their contractual obligation given this juicy contract considering their parent companies, Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks) and Cablevision have deep pockets? They would not! Dish's arguments are baseless as shown by the evidence and their destruction thereof. Anyway, I am doubling my initial estimate; Cablevision will recover at least 1 Billion in thier case against Dish. While there is pleny of blame to go around, it's just a money grab right now and Cablevision is holding all the cards at this stage of the game. Unfortunately, these costs are going to passed along to Dish Network subscribers. We shall see...
P.S. there are literally tens of thousands of pages of artifacts filed with the New York Supreme Court regarding this case, Plaintiff VOOM, Index# 600292/2008: http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASMain
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The Voom channels delivered high-quality programming and the picture quality has never been matched by anything Dish has offered since then. I am speaking not from memory, but from what I am playing this weekend off my EHD (I still have a few Voom recordings). That was the problem, I think. The high-quality PQ came with a high bandwidth. By removing all the Voom channels, Dish was able to add several lower-quality PQ channels for each Voom channel they removed.
An analogy might be to high-end audio -- excellent and high quality, but few people buy it. Dish decided that a lot of 'good' and 'medium quality' PQ channels would attract more subscribers than a few 'excellent' 'high quality' ones. The lack of new content was simply a convenient excuse. It's true that the Dolans didn't add new content very often, but that's true of a lot of other channels that weren't cut.
I personally thought that five rather than 15 channels was a good compromise, but it was offered as an ultimatum and treated as such. So, everybody lost.
An analogy might be to high-end audio -- excellent and high quality, but few people buy it. Dish decided that a lot of 'good' and 'medium quality' PQ channels would attract more subscribers than a few 'excellent' 'high quality' ones. The lack of new content was simply a convenient excuse. It's true that the Dolans didn't add new content very often, but that's true of a lot of other channels that weren't cut.
I personally thought that five rather than 15 channels was a good compromise, but it was offered as an ultimatum and treated as such. So, everybody lost.
It's been awhile, but I recall a handfull of VOOM channels were offered at 1920x1080 for several months when they moved over to Dish; they were awesome and the quality was better than when they were on VOOM since they had been broadcast at 1440x1080. Due to bandwidth constraints E* later reduced all VOOM HD to 1280x1080..which stunk IMO. http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-forum/66095-hd-lite-again.html#post564714
I won't disagree since I basically watched Equator, Monsters and a two or three other channnels. Unfortunately, agreeing to a five channel lineup would have cost VOOM hundreds of millions of dollars given their existing affiliation agreement with Dish, and the execs had a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. So they let Dish terminate the agreement in hope of recovering damages in court.
I won't disagree since I basically watched Equator, Monsters and a two or three other channnels. Unfortunately, agreeing to a five channel lineup would have cost VOOM hundreds of millions of dollars given their existing affiliation agreement with Dish, and the execs had a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. So they let Dish terminate the agreement in hope of recovering damages in court.
The initial court rulings did not agree with your assertions. Dish won the initial injunction case. Even though the court knew VOOM would be out of business without the injunction they ruled that it was not likely VOOM would prevail, so no injunction granted. That says a lot more than all the documents VOOM as presented. The court went through them, said that it was not likely to win, so the court ruled that Dish did not have to carry the channels during the court case even though VOOM would be doomed by the decision. You ask why VOOM would mess up their gravy train? Well the answer was simple accounting laziness and a corporation run as a family instead of a business. Instead of keeping accurate records of services that CVC may have given VOOM, the Dolans simply billed what they thought VOOM should be charged based on the contract dollar amount.
Yes Dish wanted out of the contract, and looked for any loophole. CVC is going to have an uphill battle accounting for their overhead charges. This is what the court pretty much found that CVC was sloppy with accounting and could not prove they were living up to their end of the contract. Simply said CVC had X amount of administrative overhead in the budget, they said VOOM is X% of our business, we will simply charge VOOM X% of the overhead regardless of how much they actually used.
Umm...you do realize that an injunction ruling implies a completely different legal standard...right? You need to deal with evidence submitted in this case and not a motion for an injunction filed in 2008. That matter was resolved (ruled on) more than four (4) years ago so, to quote Jimmy Hendrix, "You are living in the past." The issues before the court back in 2008 were:
1. Would EchoStar terminating their affiliation agreement put VOOM out of business? No! VOOM was owned by CableVision/Rainbow Media (AMC, IFC, WE, Fuse, etc.) plus they had foreign contracts (Canada, Asia) and could continue to market their channels since they were a multi-billion dollar company.
2. Did VOOM have clear/convincing/overwhelming evidence and certainty they would win this case again Dish? No! The court ruled there was ambiguity in the contract which could only be resolved through discovery of evidence and a complex evaluation of both parties understanding. If you would read the ruling, the court states they cannot issue an injunction for any matters that are ambiguous.
Okay, I'm going to have to call you on Bullsh!t. Seriously, it's complete Bullsh!t. Can you please provide the documents in which the court states this in any form or fashion? Of course, your statement flies against the audit reports filed with the court. In July 2007 Voom sent Echostar an breakdown showing its expenditure of almost 103M in 2006. Carolyn Crawford, Echostar's VP for programming, forwarded VOOM's breakdown it it's spending to E* execs stating they would have to "lean on the auditing level to accomplish termination rights...or tiering rights." During October 2007, EchoStar conducted an audit of VOOM's 2006 investment in the service. On October 26, 2007 EchoStar's own auditor concluded, in an email send to Carolyn Crawford, that "everthing at VOOM looks fine...these guys are clean...very organized, forthcoming, and from an accounting perspective run a good shop." Undeterred by the findings of its own auditor, EchoStar, on November 16, 2007, send another breach letter, threatening "to terminate the Agreement, effective immediately" if VOOM did not agree to be tired starting in February.
Regardless, it was during this time (months) that EchoStar destroyed and/or did not maintain email evidence and, as the court later noted, some of the increminating emails were indirectly captured due to another litigation involving some of Dish Network executives. Obviously, the earlier motion for injunction was a completely separate action and they were not privy to the this information nor any of the numerous artifacts provided regarding the financials; nor was it this courts mission to get involved with issuing discovery motions, taking depositions, etc. - that's the purpose of a trial court. In other words, while the plain language of the contract may have been ambiguous...the numerous attachments, appendices, emails and acknowledgements regarding the financials paint a completely different picture. E* knew exactly what the Section 10 "Spend Limt" consisisted of and how the financials would be allocated and reported (accounting methods). Again, don't take my work for it...read through the court records (e.g., attachments, spreadsheets, emails, etc.)
In summary, the motion for injunction (closed) and this case (open) scheduled to go to trial in September are two completely different issues. We'll just have to agree to disagree since there is nothing I can tell you (supported by evidence, of course) that will convince you otherwise. I suppose you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot prevent them from drinking the kool-aid.
yep and were going to lose more if charlie and his ego drops the rest of the channels not thinking of his consumer but hos own personal reasons
I do not assert that VOOM will lose the case, but it is not a slam dunk case with a billion dollar award. The court case will happen, then I am sure numerous appeals. Not to mention the amount of damages, and appeals on that. To imply that Dish will lose the case and have to pay billions is only the worst possible case. VOOM's loss of profits is certainly not close to a billion. Probably around a hundred million. Dish's refusal to renew AMC networks could indeed cost AMC more than the possible win in the VOOM case. In calculating the value of VOOM, I am sure Dish will show that no one else would buy their programming, casting significant doubt on the long term value of VOOM.
My 2 ¢ worth.
So now the AMC is trying to gouge for the programming that they have left for all providers. But it looks like they are going to be loosing this one. And they will have no recourse on this one as the contracts are up for renewal where as in the case of VOOM they were still in full force.
I would like to see an agreement on this w/o E* dropping them. But if it takes doing that for AMC nets to understand how serious do it. And they may come back to the table for discussions on pricing. But if that happens AMC will have a very weak hand.
I personally am considering adding D* if it happens (one of the lowest tiers) but won't do it the instant that AMC is dropped. Also I don't watch WE (no interest in the programming). Nor do I watch IFC or Sundance as they are SD on E*. So that is my 2¢ worth.
I liked some of the VOOM channels (mostly Rave - a real music channel) but really both sides screwed up. The courts will decide if E* has to pay Rainbow for dropping the VOOM channels. The repeats on some of the VOOM channels did pale in comparison to even the premium movie channels. If Rainbow had had any sense they would have sat down w/ E* and compromised.
So now the AMC is trying to gouge for the programming that they have left for all providers. But it looks like they are going to be loosing this one. And they will have no recourse on this one as the contracts are up for renewal where as in the case of VOOM they were still in full force.
I would like to see an agreement on this w/o E* dropping them. But if it takes doing that for AMC nets to understand how serious do it. And they may come back to the table for discussions on pricing. But if that happens AMC will have a very weak hand.
I personally am considering adding D* if it happens (one of the lowest tiers) but won't do it the instant that AMC is dropped. Also I don't watch WE (no interest in the programming). Nor do I watch IFC or Sundance as they are SD on E*. So that is my 2¢ worth.
Most channels repeat quite a bit, with Voom I could stand it because of the quaility and lack of inane commercials...
...and the sad part is that Voom was updating their programming at the same time that Dish flipped the switch.
I know of no other channels that repeated as often or for a longer time than Voom. Quality and lack of commercials is fine, but it is the shows I watch that make the difference. And to me, Voom became not valuable at all since everything could be seen over and over and over for months on end. Little new stuff offered. In today's market Voom is a loser and would be if they kept on doing what they were doing, which it seems they did.
It is a fact that no one other than Dish would even have them.
Why is it DISH destroyed evidence for over 4 months if they were in the right? If they had AMC buy the balls, why did their data retention policy go from 28 days to 7 days - thus intentionally failing to retain documents relating to a potential claim, which the court called "gross spoliation," and that DISH showed a, “pattern of egregious conduct and questionable – and, at times, blatantly improper – litigation tactics.”
And what does channels have to do with anything. If you knew anything about the lawsuit, you would know that the agreement wasn't channels, but $$. AMC had to spend:
.
The case is All About the Benjamins.
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