July 12th Charlie Chat Recap

[MikeD-C05]

I think that hd versions of the superstations would be a great idea. Dish could have the only hd superstations. Then we could work on the rest of the networks through congress ammending the shiva laws to allow for hd networks.

 

[hancox]

HD O&O is the way to go. The sheer # of waiver requests would snow in the silly affiliates

 

[DWS44]

That's funny because most of the people I know don't even know what "HD" is.

These are some of the things that they would guess "HD" stood for. You tell them it stands for "High Definition", they ask "what's that?"

That sounds alot like the folks that own and work for my local cable company!

 

[Stargazer]

I would be totally FOR the HD SuperStations. This would complement the Network HD stations very well if allowed to be purchased by consumers wherever HD stations are not available.

 

[bnaivar]

BTW In case anybody hasn't figured it out yet "compelling" means "We don't want to spend the kind of money they're asking for the channel, but they'll come around to Dish's way of thinking sooner or later."

 

[Tahoerob]

I would be totally FOR the HD SuperStations. This would complement the Network HD stations very well if allowed to be purchased by consumers wherever HD stations are not available.

I agree.
For a lot of outlying B & C zone homes like mine, the WB & UPN locals are too WEAK.

I am all for satellite superstations.

 

[Stargazer]

I would be lucky to get one or two stations halfway decent let alone any of those weaker signals. I have seen nobody pick up WB off of an antenna around here.

 

[Foxbat]

SuperStationHD would be great! In our market, UPN is a subchannel on our CBS affiliate's ATSC broadcasts, and our WB is a Low-Power NTSC station that will never go Digital. WGN-HD would be a nice touch, since we're really wishing here!

 

[rcbridge]

Can anyone explain what Charley really means by compelling programing of HD stations.
He implied that TNT is such I don't agree!!

 

[MikeD-C05]

Compelling means that the hd channel must be cheap in price to be added to Dishnetwork. Charlie is very cheap and so this keeps the price of Dishnetwork programming down, unfortunately it keeps the hd content down as well.

I don't know why he doesn't make some deal that is cheap to add the hd versions of Cinemax and Starz/Encore and The Movie Channel as well. I know that if he did he probably wouldn't charge for them any more than he does for the hd versions of Hbo and Showtime. It wouldn't add anymore revenue but it would be very cool addition to the hd premium packs. Of course he could spin the whole group off as the hd premium Movie pack and charge the price of a regular movie pack say 9.99 and then he could offer this as seperate option if people didn't want to buy the hd pack as it is now. Some aren't interested in Discovery or ESpn in hd so this could be a way for him to still reach customers and make some money as well.

Either way the price has to be right for Charlie to add them or they aren't compelling.