Scott, It's a valid point.. and I am not trolling, (Not intentionally). You would think that dish would correct their business model which is failing. My question is why wont they if they know it is failing? Or who has the blinders on that wont come to the reality that it is indeed failing. Every quarter we see the numbers come out that is unsustainable for dish in the long run. I have moved on a long time ago, but I want dish to add the full time HDRSN's as it is an option, it promotes stronger competition between them and their competition.
While I understand they are trying to make themselves different but how they are doing it is killing them. The way you go about doing that is you offer everything that the top dog does, and then some more. You take the market by storm by simply having everything in HD and then some more. You don’t do it by getting rid of programming you don’t like or you think is too pricey. You offer it at the higher price and let the subscribers (market) decide if that value is too high or not. If they want it they will pay for it. DirecTV’s model does it nicely!
Aside from that, you add in BBMP and other extras that sub’s can’t live without. You need to sell it to them that way, otherwise your message gets diluted. Dish's reputation has become so crappy that they wonder why they can’t keep subs. You can try to polish a turd, but in the end you still have a turd. The only way to shape a turd into something nicer is to make the right changes which dish is not doing.
Aside from that... I do have to give a disclosure... While I do work for a RSN, and have expertise in the field and how things are handled, Like it is said in my signature, the postings of myself here are not those of my employer, and are of my own thoughts and don’t reflect the views or discressions of my employer, which has nothing to do with me posting here, my personal thoughts or opinions about dish. I really want the best for dish and its very disappointing to see them not add the programming that is causing subs to jump. It's obvious that subs are jumping ship. If everything was right in dish land, the subs would be staying.........
I normally try to stay out of these dog fights, but I've been a DISH retailer for 11 years and have thousands of customers. Ironically, I generate the vast majority of my customers from advertising on sports talk format radio. To date, I can count on one hand the number of complaints I've received about the RSNs not being full-time HD, and then
ONLY when DISH decides not to show a live sporting event in HD. I've never had a single customer call me to complain that the
"Midwest Sports Report" is not in HD. Never once. Not Grumpy, Sleepy, or Papa Smurf. Not a single soul. For that matter I've only had one customer call me about losing Disney in HD, and not a single complaint about losing HD feeds ABC Family, Disney XD, or ESPNews (frankly, I was braced for the worst). I can also clearly state that I'm not aware of ever losing a sale because those channels weren't in HD - full-time or otherwise.
I go back to the very early days of the DVR - the DISH Player (helluva GUI even though the unit was a piece of sh*t). I was the very first retailer in the Midwest region to install a 501 PVR. I remember being in a meeting with a local radio personality who was going to endorse my company and we were talking about DVRs and his eyes lit up. He looked across the table at me and stated "My God, this is going to be like printing money." And it was. I rode that wave for years until AT&T, Verizon, Charter, and DTV finally caught up and then surpassed DISH tech (if you remember the quarter prior to DTV's release of whole home dvr tech they only gained 13K subscribers and spent a small fortune in doing it).
The point I'm making is technology drives consumers, and when DISH tech ruled they grew by leaps and bounds. Indisputable. Un-refutable. I remember at one point DISH had more active DVRs in the marketplace than all the other providers combined. Since then DISH has most definitely lost that edge, and with it subscribers. I get calls everyday from uVerse, DTV, and Charter customers wanting to switch, but they won't take step back in time to an inferior DVR (no pun intended).
Now what happened between the 722 and the Hopper is conjecture (the fiasco with the 922, etc). But, I can tell you this - I now have a substantial waiting list for the Hopper. I didn't advertise it, or publicly talk about it. These are people who've heard about it and know me through my advertising. Most of them have between 4 and 6 TV's (mostly HDTVs). Every single one of them has called me back after I emailed them additional Hopper info (including a link to Satellite Guys' vid with Vivek ..
thanks be to Scott!) telling me how much they want it. More than half think the PTAT feature is awesome. We quickly forget that most consumers aren't the power users we are, and the Hopper/Joey system fills and mostly exceeds their expectations and desires.
DISH's new website, printed material, and upcoming media campaign is substantially better than the old (hard to believe DISH never had a national campaign before now!). Plus, it's starting to look like they'll release Hopper/Joey on time, if not a few weeks early. Thanks be to Joe for that! I love Charlie, but putting Joe in charge so he can focus on what he does best has turned out to be genius.
DISH does not have to be DIRECTV, but they do have to be technically competitive, smart about capacity, and forward thinking. Everything they are now. There will be growing pains (finding the right niche and message for Blockbuster @Home would be a great start), and some people will be left behind. And if DISH really can roll-out a dependable nationwide ultra high speed network using their already owned bandwidth, then game over.
Now in full disclosure, I own my company and this opinion is the opinion of my company.
