Maybe its better to threaten Charlie?
As it has already been pointed out, all these local broadcasters seem to be able to reach agreements with everyone but Charlie. I've been in touch with Bonten and UNC TV and it appears that there are only two things for a sane person to believe anymore (and I say this as a Dish Network subscriber since 1997):
After witnessing Tivo, Voom, and a million Viacom actual lawsuits and contentious legal threats back and forth (and now this situation with individual local broadcast groups around the country), I can believe:
Either Charlie is right AND everyone else is unreasonable.
OR
Charlie and the people he has working for him are being completely unreasonable in their demands where there are a number of other players (Comcast, Direct, Verizon, AT&T, etc...) and it is clear that there are certain normal industry standards for contracts which he refuses.
Sometimes being a maverick and running against the grain means you're just acting like a dick. You could decide, for instance, that just because the established way of doing things is to drive on the right-hand side of the road and pass on the left-- that just isn't good enough for you because you are a maverick and a nonconformist-- you want to drive on the left slowly and let people pass you on the right. But in the end, you'd really just be a dick.
Echostar has a lot of good things (DVR, equipment, some programming packages, etc.) that recommend it, BUT I cannot believe that all these other people are making unreasonable demands on Charlie. Ultimately, programming is the important thing, else we'd all be watching Charlie Chat 24/7.