I agree with MikeD completely. Only now do cooler minds prevail and understands that Charlie looks out further than the end of his driveway. They started Autohopping the broadcast channels. The contacts came up, so they said, keep the price the same and we'll delay the start of autohop. So it will happen with others. Skip is still there. But it is nice to know which can hop and which can not.
An announcement in advance maybe in this board might have been made. But instead of Dish paying 20% more to defray the lost revenue that CBS was seeing they are paying the same and not passing on the new prices to us. Hell, which I doubt is likely, the retransmission charges might have been reduced but I can't see CBS or the others agreeing on that. So IMHO Dish is not pocketing anything.
And yes, why is everyone crying over 2 channels when the recorder has the ability (once channels are moved on the satellite to auto-record and hop over any, repeat any, channel. I have yet, except for one inference that anyone is whining about not being able to Auto-Hop over the TCM and USA network (etc, etc) commercials. Why not? Because you never had it...
It also gives Charlie the power when contracts expire with TCM and USA to just start Auto-Hopping those channels. In about 2 months, all the networks that Dish has started Auto-Hopping on will come back to re-open contract talks and guess what, there will be a price reduction involved. Dish doesn't even to play bad guy at the beginning. They didn't warn ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX that they would be auto-hopped did they? Why warn USA and TCM that they will be to? That will just cause them to dig in their heels, stall negotiations and still raise rates. Simple business obfuscation.
Renegotiate the USA contract, take a 10% bump in price, then auto-hop them, eat that bump for a few months. Guess what, USA come back and says we'll give you the 10 or 20% back (maybe even retro-actively) if you also include is in your longer delay package.
As a C-Suite executive (sorry, not marketing) I would walk up to Charlie or the CMO and kiss them on the cheek! A throughly thought out (let's not win the battle, let's win the war) strategy. You gained Auto-Hop and it's still capable. You never had it before (Apple Watch, or iPhone anyone???) and now you can't live without it. Well the networks can't live with it. Perfect position to be in. He must have taken a lessons from Apple!
Oh and BTW, what other provider will you threaten to go to because you can't Auto-Hop anymore? NADA.. Time Warner? Nope, ComCast, Nope, Common, This is not bad for us, inconvenient for some because your iPhone (or sorry Hopper) doesn't work the same anymore, Yes. But the end result is the costs stay stable for us and maybe give Dish some extra buffer to launch a few more satellites to do real competition they WILL be facing. What have you been reading about what NETFLIX and APPLE are doing now????
With all due respect.......