Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network off Dish due to contract dispute

[CPanther95]

a la carte will hurt the viewership and advertisement revenues. Advertiser will look at what will get out there and who has the most viewers.

Gee, advertisers paying channels that have garnered the most viewers? What a novel ideal. I guess it makes much more sense to let the channels decide how much they are worth, no need to let consumer demand be a factor - after all, we just write the checks, we don't know what we want, or what's best for us.

 

[belawrence]

much ado about nothing

I'm not gonna miss Lifetime. Even my wife and two teenage daughters call it the "women getting wronged and then revenge" channel. Bandwidth saved for more HD is what it amounts to.

 

[SatelliteGAL]

Did anyone get an email from Lifetime?
Mine read as follows.....

From : Lifetime Television <LifetimeTelevision@email.lifetimetelevision.com>
Reply-To : <subscriptions@lifetimetv.com>
Sent : Monday, January 2, 2006 5:46 PM
To : daigle01@HOTMAIL.COM
Subject : Get Lifetime Back on the Air!

If you have trouble reading this e-mail, click here.
This e-mail was sent to you by Lifetime Television. To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add LifetimeTelevision@email.lifetimetelevision.com to your address book.

CALL NOW AND TELL DISH NETWORK TO STOP DENYING THE TRUTH AND DENYING WOMEN LIFETIME: 1-888-284-7116

The Truth is that DISH Pulled the Plug on Women and on Lifetime Networks, Just Like They've Done to Other Networks Many Times Before

If you or anyone you know is a DISH subscriber, you may have tried to tune in to Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network for the great movies we wanted to share with you during the holidays and found that we're off the air. You may have heard from the DISH network and its CEO Charlie Ergen that this is a result of Lifetime being unreasonable. But the Truth is that DISH is totally misleading their subscribers and at the same time, denying women their favorite networks. The Truth is that DISH unilaterally pulled Lifetime Networks off the air, on New Year's Eve no less, despite our offer to extend their contract through the holidays and despite more than seven months of our efforts to reach a fair agreement.

The Truth is that DISH and Charlie Ergen have pulled channels in the midst of negotiations before but Lifetime has not. The Truth is that Lifetime has completed literally hundreds of similar deals with cable and satellite distributors in the last few years and has never had this problem.

Here's how you can help. Make your dissatifaction heard right away by calling DISH network at 1-888-284-7116 and emailing ceoofdishnetwork@dishnetwork.com and ask Charlie Ergen to tell the Truth and put Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network back on the air. We deeply regret the difficulty this disruption of service has caused our viewers and hope to resolve this soon, but greatly appreciate all of your support especially in this difficult time. In the meantime, if you want to watch Lifetime, you can consider contacting another satellite provider or your local cable company.

Click here to contact Lifetime.

Visit our message boards to share your thoughts.






Lifetime Television Networks | Worldwide Plaza | 309 West 49th Street | New York, NY 10019

 

[mitchflorida]

It doesn't sound like Lifetime and Dish have reached an agreement. Not with letters like that.

 

[LER]

IIRC that letter was posted earlier in the thread. (I don't feel like wading through 29 pages...)

 

[SatelliteGAL]

IIRC that letter was posted earlier in the thread. (I don't feel like wading through 29 pages...)

darn - I did wade and didnt see it Sorry for the duplication

 

[LER]

Not a biggie. I **think** scott pointed this out where he mentioned the possible agreement. I.E. where he said the war of the websites was getting acrimonius(sp?)?

 

[mruk69]

You know what ticks me off is every time there is a dispute Charlie always talks about unfair price increases to his customers. Well I would like to ask everytime a channel goes of permanantly when does he ever reduce our bill. He has no agreement for these 2 channels plus OLN and yet we are getting a price increase.

Thanks, just my 2 cents.

 

[Stargazer]

Thats a cute avatar satellitegal. Got another customer going to DirecTv and was told that their neighbor is going to DirecTv as well because of the Lifetime channel. Glad one of them are not my customers and the other is past the 12 months but it affects churn.

 

[Roger]

I bet Charlie's secret fantasy is to get rid of ESPN.

 

[Pueblo]

Hi all -- We've been with Dish Network for many years -- so many I cannot remember when we signed up -- whenever they first started out. BUT, today we called Direct TV and are getting it installed TOMORROW afternoon -- due to the situation with Lifetime. The customer service rep for Direct TV said he had gotten many many calls this morning (I had to wait a while for my call to be answered, by the way.) -- people wanting to switch to Direct TV because of the Lifetime/Dish Network dispute. I think the manner in which Dish interrupted service was extremely rude and unprofessional. We were right in the middle of watching a movie on Lifetime when the plug was pulled by Dish and the picture suddenly went into another movie from the WE channel with Steve Martin. It was so weird. We didn't realize what was going on at first and thought someone at Dish had pushed a wrong button. Anyhow, we are out of Dish as of tomorrow and into Direct TV!

 

[Stargazer]

I think a lot of people will switch simply because of the inconvenience and the number of times this is happening. People want uninterrupted service.

 

[Jeff_R]

AMEN brother DWS44... Now why don't the programmers, distrubuters and the government allow us that freedom rather than forcing channels we don't want down our throats? Let the marginal channels go under.

I haven't checked recently, but a while back, BEV offered up their channels in packages. As I recall, there was a sports package, family package, news, lifestyles, etc. You can pick any of the groups you want, or pick a larger package with many of those channels included.

Why the cablecos and satellite providers can't provide that, I'm not sure. Start with your locals, and add as many packages as you want, with, say, at least during a contract, a 40 dollar a month minimum bill.

Of course, that makes sense, gives consumers real choice, and might actually help everyone involved, so it wouldn't happen.

 

[twinrocks]

Not Happy with Dish Network

We have been Dish customers for over a decade! I am one who watches Lifetime and LMN a lot, as well as my daughters family (she is 32). My granddaughter even watches it. I want to change to Direct TV, but we pay Dish by the year, and had to have a new receiver a few months ago so had to renew the contract for another two years to get the receiver!! SO I am stuck, and not happy!!

I emailed Dish, and I emailed Lifetime about the situation, I am sure the replies were canned ones, especially Dish stating how much they care about their customers......right! I actually am not happy with Lifetime either! They show so much paid programming, like no one needs to watch TV in the middle of the night. There is so much paid programming on stations these days, how could they be going broke? They get paid by commercials, paid programming, and by us.

I might go back to an antenna on my roof!

 

[jeffwtux]

I think it's obvious who the real

winners in these Charlie vs. Broadcaster are..........

 

[jeffwtux]

The biggest winners are

these satellite forums like satelliteguys.us and dbstalk.com. Traffic and posts increase 10 fold during these disputes !

 

[tujucrue]

The real problem for me is how Mr. Ergen, the CEO of the company, has handled him self during important business proceedings. As the CEO, his job is to look out for the best interest of his company, and as he is a "Service Provider," his company is his customers. Many of you think that Lifetime is just a small channel that a few people watch. I certainly am not going to dispute any facts that any one has mentioned on this message board. I would not presume to quote numbers, I have none to quote. The real issue is the ramifications that such events have in the publics interest.

Such news is now available to anyone, anywhere. Yahoo had it on the front page as did Google! These site represent tens of millions of potential customers who only read that Dish Removed Another Channel. To me, that represents a step in the wrong direction for a company that is trying to increase growth and, for that reason, Ergen should be ashamed.

This decision to remove that channel is not his decision to make. It is the decision of the customer whether or not they want to accept the increase or lose the channel. If dish could just be more attentive to their customers, they would not have a problem.

Most businesses go by the following rules when it comes to customers.

1) Retain existing customers. Existing customers are cheaper to maintain and bring in more long term income than new activations, thus offsetting most pay increases.
2) Customers Hate Change. Many people would rather avoid the hassle of changing services but people will go through the hassle if they feel they are being mistreated.
3) Create Something Exciting. If your product gets stale, so does the company and the money.
4) Generate new forms of income. Dish's competition (mostly cable) is seeing new profits in bundled services like internet. Meanwhile dish is still just a TV provider.

I apologize about rambling but it drives me crazy when a company that used to be good like Dish loses their way through poor executive decisions. I hope Ergen wakes up and sees what he is doing before it's to late.

 

[cleblanc]

You know what ticks me off is every time there is a dispute Charlie always talks about unfair price increases to his customers. Well I would like to ask everytime a channel goes of permanantly when does he ever reduce our bill. He has no agreement for these 2 channels plus OLN and yet we are getting a price increase.

I agree. What pisses me off is that this is happening 30 days before a price increase which supposedly covers the costs of increased programming costs. Seems to me that Charlie wants to charge us more for programming but he doesn't want to pay it back to the providers. I don't see how he can possibly justify price increases because whenever the provider wants more money he just yanks the channel.

 

[CPanther95]

Providers only have "increased programming costs" because they keep increasing the amount of programming they are forcing down our throats.

 

[Purogamer]

Charlie can't win really, either he stands up and tries to keep prices down and listen to us bitch about channels being taken off the air, or just hand out money to keep the channels and listen to us bitch about the prices being too high.

There is no channel that everyone watches where it can be unanimously dealt with. Charlie has to go on what his data suggest and I guess his data tells him that he can play hardball with lifetime. Never heard a peep about lifetime until this happened...