I dont understand how you can expect to have churn, earn a bigger profit off of existing customers and expect to stay in business. People are eventually going to jump ship and are with the disputes. With that said, if you are making more off of existing subs, that means it's either because they are paying more because you are charging more and making more of a profit, OR your customer base is so happy that they staying and beyond the investment point. (unlikely, but there is a percentage that will fall in to this category.)
With DirecTV gaining subs and Dish loosing subs, it appears to me that DirecTV is doing something right where as Dish isnt doing something right. This is my opinion.
I agree . Something isn't right about why DIRECTV is adding subs and DISH is losing them for so long now. But there is also those subs who churn and then get the best deals with the competition, and then after their new sub deals are over ,they churn back like yo-yos. Then there is that ever increasing group of subs who cut the cord and the cord nevers. The newer generation has no need for the current sat/cable model that makes all of us endure forced bundeling. So every year the newer groups of young adults is not taking the bait and using pay tv. The older generations are literally dieing out each day as we speak and they sure don't need pay tv anymore.
There is also the never ending price hikes and programming disputes that cause churn from DISH to the competition. Add to that all the subs ,who don't pay their bills on time and that DISH drops, and you can see why they are losing subs. As for profits , they say repeatedly in articles about these earnings, that price hikes due to increased yearly programming pricing, are way they continue to make higher average price per sub -even while overall subs drop. That doesn't even include all the money DISH makes from their FEES that they create and charge because they can. They vary from as low as $7.00 dvr fee to $12.00 dvr fee. Additional receiver fees are by class of receivers and they can be $7.00 to as high as $17.00 for a dual tuner receiver.
I've been saying since 2010, when they came out with the complicated receiver class additional receiver fee structure, that DISH needs to drop down the price of their fees and consolidate them to as few as necessary. The programming is still cheaper than DIRECTV and cable , but not by more than $10.00. But when you add the DISH fees back in on top of the programming , then DISH can be quite higher -especially if you have a family and multiple receivers . Not so much if you are a single receiver owner and no dvr fee. But I am sure that this won't happen.
It is almost like we are on the DISH Titanic and we are in slow motion watching the ship hit the iceberg and then sink. I hope that Charlie will think about doing something that attracts subs and lets DISH grow for a change, like dropping the price on the fees ,rather than just keep making profits on an ever decreasing number of subs. I mean 134,000 subs lost in 3 months of this year is ridiculous. How many years has DISH been at or around 13 -14 million subs now? I can't remember DISH growing since the days of the NO DVR FEEs for the 500/501/721/921pvrs. Back then they added like 2 million subs in like a year ,because they charged nothing for a pvr fee and DIRECTV used to charge like $9.50 a month and that was early in the last decade. It might behoove old Charlie to rethink some of these fees, in order to attract some new subs , or there might not be much of a future for DISH. Making profits on fewer base of subs won't beat making profits off of a larger growing group of subs.
