New Install, new equipment?

[telstar_1]

The problem with a Direct and Dish merger is the equipment is completely incompatible so all subscribers of one service will need to be transitioned over to the other.

Or else a combined service would need to operate dual systems.

Dish and Direct merging at some point is the only path forward, just like Sirius and XM. There will always be a market for satellite tv for the foreseeable future, but the market share is certainly shrinking every day. We’ll also see streamers and tv providers continue to consolidate and merge.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Did they merge because they were losing subs?

I primarily watched the UHF stations back in the Ye olde days.

Where all the horror/sci-fi stuff was on.

Back in the day, there were separate VHF & UHF "markets"- with just 12 VHF channels (no ch.1) and need to not slot adjacent in same area, the bigger urbs which were assigned slots first would have quickly crowded smaller markets out of availability if the UHF band hadn't been opened. For instance, Peoria-Bloomington is surrounded by VHF markets such as Chicago, Quad-Cities, Champaign-Urbana, St. Louis, even Ottumwa, IA/Kirksville, Mo. Although all of those signals are weak here, it's still enough to interfere, or for any VHF broadcasting here to interfere with those.

Thus when Peoria started to be assigned in 1953 it was all in UHF. First 1 channel, then 3. Then 4, as PBS added on in 1970. Then 5 as Fox came along in the 80s.

Meanwhile in the VHF markets, particularly the larger ones, UHF assignments were made to independent, religious and other non-network programmers. These are the ch's people remember for the sci-fi, horror, etc. stuff.

 

[Bruce]

The problem with a Direct and Dish merger is the equipment is completely incompatible so all subscribers of one service will need to be transitioned over to the other.

Which will cost a extreme amount of money to switch over one side to another.

Another reason way it may never happen.

The other factor against it, if Dish bought/merged with it, DirecTV is still carrying about $10 Billion of debt, add that to Dish/echostar’s debt of $19 Billion /future liabilities of $39 Billion, starts off the new merged company deeply in the hole with diminishing returns.

 

[jerryez]

Dual equipmentn is only one factor in reducing cost. There are duplicate administrative costs, not to mention install tecnicians.

 

[telstar_1]

Dual equipmentn is only one factor in reducing cost. There are duplicate administrative costs, not to mention install tecnicians.

Those could be combined.

 

[HipKat]

The problem with a Direct and Dish merger is the equipment is completely incompatible so all subscribers of one service will need to be transitioned over to the other.

Perfect, Massive increase in work for Dish Techs