Thank You Charlie.

[whatchel1]

To me HanoverPretzel you have disproved your own point. Sports is the gravy not the bread and butter. If sports were the bread and butter then basic cable/sat would be full of sports channels and not USA, Discover, A&E, SyFy, and etc w/1 sports channel ESPN. Sports is what brings in the extra on top of mainstays. Every cable/sat provider put ESPN into their lowest package that is why it ask for and gets the big bucks. It is the brand everyone knows. The RSN's & Lakers ( and their ilk) are just niche stations that sports people love. I really feel that sports should be stripped out of standard packages and put in their own package. With maybe leaving the one biggie in the basic package. As far as I'm concerned Charlie really should push for doing that.

 

[GaryPen]

I'd be totally happy with a 100 percent sports free TV provider. Imagine how low your bill would truly be.

It would be exactly the same. (Are NY Dish subs paying less than other Dish subs because they don't get the 3 major RSN's in their DMA?)

 

[elmafu69]

They should just move all sports to its own packages and you pay $10-15 for it depending on where you live and how much your RSNs charge

 

[Claude Greiner]

I don't have a beef with the regional sports networks, it's ESPN that's the whole problem.

Only time I watch ESPN is once in a blue moon when they have my local team on where they are not on the regionals.

 

[kalin21]

If you get NBA League Pass with Dish you can watch Lakers games right?

 

[HanoverPretzel]

To me HanoverPretzel you have disproved your own point. Sports is the gravy not the bread and butter. If sports were the bread and butter then basic cable/sat would be full of sports channels and not USA, Discover, A&E, SyFy, and etc w/1 sports channel ESPN.

How many people do you know who really, really love Discover and wouldn't be able to deal with it being replaced by a similar channel? What about USA Network? Apart from wrestling, which is sort of a quasi-sport, nothing on that network doesn't air elsewhere or couldn't be replaced with a Netflix subscription. I just feel like most cable channels are fairly generic and have programming that differs very little from other programming and that can be seen elsewhere at lower costs and in a more convenient way (for the DVR-less, anyhow).

Most of the non-sports networks aren't even really distinct from each other anymore. Like SyFy, one would think they would exclusive show science fiction, but they're turned into basically a general interest channel. They show all sorts of things that aren't even remotely science fiction. SpikeTV, once the network for men, is now trying to be USA Network or TNT #6,052. Many of these channels have non-exclusive contracts to the very same reruns of the very same shows as several other networks.

It's the sports that often, if you are a sports fan, you just can't get anywhere else. If your favorite baseball team is playing 150 games on your local RSN, that's how you're going to watch it- seeing some other baseball team or another sport on another channel isn't going to substitute for that, nor, since so much of it depends on being live, are you going to go out and get a season set on DVD or through a Netflix type rental service.

To your point about there not being a lot of sports channels, making it not bread and butter, off the top of my head: ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, NBC Sports Channel, 1-4 regional sports networks (Depending on the market), CBS College Sports, NFL Network, NHL Network, NBA Network, MLB Network, NFL Redzone (Probably a few I am missing there). Then there are all the sports that air on the over the air networks, like baseball on FOX or the NHL on NBC, and non-sports cable networks like baseball on TBS or the NBA on TNT.

Also, I think a lot of times non-sports channels are so numerous because they are so much cheaper in many cases. The owner of the network can buy the rights to air reruns of old shows and movies, make a few low-budget original series (Often not even real scripted shows- often just reality tv or something), and call it a network. Then the cable or dish company can get the rights for pennies per person and add it to a massive list of channels to say they provide value even though the channel itself is usually pretty generic and less than irreplaceable. The core product I think is the sports- but like many things in life, there's more of the filler because it's cheaper and easier to obtain. With sports, the channels have to pay the leagues massive amounts of money, and then the carrier has to pay the channels, and so forth.

I really feel that sports should be stripped out of standard packages and put in their own package. With maybe leaving the one biggie in the basic package. As far as I'm concerned Charlie really should push for doing that.

I'm not saying you don't have the right to your opinion. You do. Clearly you have a point of view, and clearly there are some other folks who share it with you. And that's fine. I just would strongly object to being forced to pay for a sports-less package I don't really want (At least not at a significant cost- strip the sports and the news and it'd be worth about $10 a month to me) to then get the "right" to pay for the sports I have Dish to watch to begin with. It'd be like going to a grocery store to get some chicken and before entering being told you have to pay $60 to buy a bunch of liver or something to get the right to go buy the chicken, not a good deal if you don't care for liver or don't like liver enough to pay $60 for it.

The current system to me makes more sense. Yeah, you non-sports fans have sports channels you don't watch much of (Or any of). Yeah, we sports fans have non-sports channels we don't watch much of (Or any of). But because they are packaged together, we can all be sold as being potential viewers of all the channels (And who knows, we might switch the channel and a non-sports fan could suddenly get into a sport, or a sports fan could suddenly get into some other programming), and because of that it's cheaper per person.

 

[HanoverPretzel]

If you get NBA League Pass with Dish you can watch Lakers games right?

Not if you live in the Los Angeles region. With those League Pass/Center Ice type packages, the local teams are always blacked out, because the regional sports network has the exclusive contractual rights to those games in their local market (That's how they're sold to the local regional sports networks- they get exclusive rights to certain games within a certain market area, what the league considers the home territory of the team it bought the rights to). Obviously, there is the occasional nationally televised game your team might play on ESPN or whatever, but that'd be all you'd get as a Lakers fan in Los Angeles with Dish.

Now, *outside* of the greater Los Angeles region (Which would extend beyond LA, I don't know how far. But I can tell you that many of the Baltimore/Washington teams have a local market that includes Maryland, DC, Virginia, and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Delaware- the baseball teams even get part of North Carolina as home territory), normally you would get most Lakers games if you subscribed to League Pass (Which is very expensive, but some folks can afford it). But if Dish doesn't care the RSN that produces the games at all, I don't know that it would have the home Lakers feed (With the Lakers' home announcers and production crew) to show out of area Lakers fans, you might just get Lakers games as produced by the regional sports networks of the other teams that play the Lakers, with the opposing team's home announcers for any give game, if Dish is carrying those RSNs to other markets and get toss the feed on league pass. Someone else can probably chime in and tell you for sure, but the sense I get is that if the local RSN for a team isn't picked up, you probably can't get those games out of market unless they are feeds from the "opposition" teams' markets.

But League Pass does no good to a person who wants to watch his home team while living in the team's home area, regardless of who his provider is (Directv and cable would be the same in that regard). For that, he needs the appropriate regional sports network (Aside from the handful that might wind up as a national game on national channel).

 

[whatchel1]

It has become quite obvious to me that you don't understand what the term "bread and butter" means in a cable/sat package term. It is the package that is easiest to get into. In the case of E* that would be either the Smart Pack or the Welcome Pack. Neither of which has sports in them. You have to step up to top 120 to get sports. And yes that pack has ESPN, ESPN2 & ESPNews in it. Everything you have discussed as packages are not bread and butter w/ gravy added to it. IOW's more channels that usually make additional money because many of them cost the provider little more to be added to the "basic" bread and butter channels. BTW in top 120 they have as many shopping channels as sports channels so they really bring in cash on both ends there. Sports is a niche set of channels all be it a very large niche (I'll grant you that).

 

[The Fat Man]

I am realizing that there are a lot of Dish subscriber they do not like sports.
But also you have to realize that Dish Network has appr. 900.000 subscriber in the southern California area, maybe 200.00 of them like the Lakers to watch including me.
For these 200 thousand one of the reason to get Dish was that they could watch the lakers on Fox West. I like the Dish technology but if Dish is not going to carry the laker channel any more I am forced to look at the competition and so are the other 200 thousand Dish subscriber.
Thank you for your understanding.

I never said I wasn't a sports fan. In fact I bought season tickets to a local AHL franchise because I'm sick of waiting for the NHL to get their heads out of their asses. And I never had NHL season tickets in the past. You could flip the bill for the Lakers channel if it was a premium service. The team wants every subscriber to flip the bill. Let us sports fans pay. Case and point. I'd pay for NESN a la carte, but not CSN New England. Why? I hate the crap basketball played in the NBA. I watch the NCAA men's and women's ball, and I watch the Suns of the WNBA.

 

[Yespage]

Charlie has been more than upfront that he is not going to say "yes" to the RSN's.

You mean he says no to blank checks to RSNs? Don't we have B10 and PAC10 as well? Does DTV have Pac10?

 

[HanoverPretzel]

It has become quite obvious to me that you don't understand what the term "bread and butter" means in a cable/sat package term. It is the package that is easiest to get into. In the case of E* that would be either the Smart Pack or the Welcome Pack. Neither of which has sports in them. You have to step up to top 120 to get sports. And yes that pack has ESPN, ESPN2 & ESPNews in it. Everything you have discussed as packages are not bread and butter w/ gravy added to it. IOW's more channels that usually make additional money because many of them cost the provider little more to be added to the "basic" bread and butter channels. BTW in top 120 they have as many shopping channels as sports channels so they really bring in cash on both ends there. Sports is a niche set of channels all be it a very large niche (I'll grant you that).

The welcome and smart pack can't have very many subscribers. I know they are popular on the forum (The forum is a pretty small subset of people with unique tastes), but at least one (Maybe both) aren't even advertised on Dish's website, and I think they lack popular appeal. Why would I say they lack popular appeal? Because I think they fall beneath the level of lineup quality that many people are willing to pay for. If I got to the point where it was "Welcome Pack or nothing", I'd probably choose "Nothing" and buy a Netflix streaming subscription or something instead.

I think when you ask 1) What drives the most subscriptions? -and- 2) What is the lowest package of channels that the bulk of people would pay for rather than go without and save the money? I think the answer to (1) is sports and the answer to (2) is something like AT120+ dish wise. With cable, the answer to (2) would be expanded basic cable- most people will cut the cord before dropping to lifeline (OTA channels and a few other minor ones) service. Although, with cable, the number of people who have lifeline service may be a bit inflated by the fact that a lot of times if you have cable Internet, you can carry a lifeline cable subscription that's about the same price as the "no television" fee for not bundling TV service with Internet (So people figure, hey, it's essentially free, why not? Some probably don't even bother to plug the cord into the TV), and with Dish the number of Welcome Pack subscribers could be inflated by some CSRs allowing people to use it for fulfill their contracts and not pay an EFT they can't afford.

 

[HanoverPretzel]

In fact I bought season tickets to a local AHL franchise because I'm sick of waiting for the NHL to get their heads out of their asses.

I second the NHL needing to get their heads out of the asses. We may not always agree when it comes to television, but we can agree on that. This lockout is annoying the heck out of me. I mean, my annoyance level with it started fairly low when they were just missing training camp and preseason (Which i don't watch anyway), but now we've missed two months of regular season and I'm really missing hockey. Adding to my level of annoyance is that they take the fans for granted and pull this crap every five years or so (The last lockout wasn't that long ago, and an entire season was missed)- at least sign 10 year collecting bargaining agreements so we fans are guaranteed not to have to put up with this more than once a decade. Every five years or so is too often.

The NFL lockout a couple years ago didn't bother me nearly as much because they got it all settled without any missed games, so it wasn't a big deal for as a fan. A delayed start to training camp or even missed pre-season games don't phase me, but they needed to get their act together before the regular season, which they did, and the NHL did not do.

 

[Scherrman]

The welcome and smart pack can't have very many subscribers. I know they are popular on the forum (The forum is a pretty small subset of people with unique tastes), but at least one (Maybe both) aren't even advertised on Dish's website, and I think they lack popular appeal. Why would I say they lack popular appeal? Because I think they fall beneath the level of lineup quality that many people are willing to pay for. If I got to the point where it was "Welcome Pack or nothing", I'd probably choose "Nothing" and buy a Netflix streaming subscription or something instead.

I think when you ask 1) What drives the most subscriptions? -and- 2) What is the lowest package of channels that the bulk of people would pay for rather than go without and save the money? I think the answer to (1) is sports and the answer to (2) is something like AT120+ dish wise. With cable, the answer to (2) would be expanded basic cable- most people will cut the cord before dropping to lifeline (OTA channels and a few other minor ones) service. Although, with cable, the number of people who have lifeline service may be a bit inflated by the fact that a lot of times if you have cable Internet, you can carry a lifeline cable subscription that's about the same price as the "no television" fee for not bundling TV service with Internet (So people figure, hey, it's essentially free, why not? Some probably don't even bother to plug the cord into the TV), and with Dish the number of Welcome Pack subscribers could be inflated by some CSRs allowing people to use it for fulfill their contracts and not pay an EFT they can't afford.

The Smart Pack and Welcome Pack are not popluar at all. Of our entire customer base the majority have the AT200. A close second is the AT120 then AT250 and then the rest of whatever is available.

 

[dare2be]

I said this in the YES thread...look at AT120 and AT120+...a $5 difference for two packages whose only main monetary difference is the addition of the RSNs. Why not do that with AT200 and AT250? AT200 would become AT200+ (same price as now) and create an AT200 that doesn't have the RSNs for $5 cheaper. Same for AT250. It would appease sports and non-sports fans alike.

 

[HanoverPretzel]

I said this in the YES thread...look at AT120 and AT120+...a $5 difference for two packages whose only main monetary difference is the addition of the RSNs. Why not do that with AT200 and AT250? AT200 would become AT200+ (same price as now) and create an AT200 that doesn't have the RSNs for $5 cheaper. Same for AT250. It would appease sports and non-sports fans alike.

As I said in the other thread, I think you'd wind up with a situation where they just priced the old AT200 the same and charged $5 extra for the sports RSNs previously included at no additional cost. When have you ever seen prices for packages go down with any provider?

Also, there are possible contractual issues with RSNs there where they are guaranteed certain tier placement or percentage of total subs. Dish would likely have to renegotiate with them one by one as their contracts came up to structure things the way you're talking about, and a lot of them would probably balk complete or ask for more per sub as compensation, and thus wind up dropped by Dish.

 

[dare2be]

As I said in the other thread, I think you'd wind up with a situation where they just priced the old AT200 the same and charged $5 extra for the sports RSNs previously included at no additional cost. When have you ever seen prices for packages go down with any provider?

Then do it at the inevitable Feb. price hike. The existing packages can go up by $5 and be renamed as + packages, and create new packages without the RSNs at the current package prices. No package price goes down in that scenario.

As far as contractual agreements getting in the way, any of that would be pure speculation.

 

[PTVC]

I am realizing that there are a lot of Dish subscriber they do not like sports.
But also you have to realize that Dish Network has appr. 900.000 subscriber in the southern California area, maybe 200.00 of them like the Lakers to watch including me.
For these 200 thousand one of the reason to get Dish was that they could watch the lakers on Fox West. I like the Dish technology but if Dish is not going to carry the laker channel any more I am forced to look at the competition and so are the other 200 thousand Dish subscriber.
Thank you for your understanding.

199,999 people, plus you, are going to leave Dish because they don't have or won't continue carrying seasonal channel?

 

[PTVC]

How many people do you know who really, really love Discover and wouldn't be able to deal with it being replaced by a similar channel? What about USA Network? Apart from wrestling, which is sort of a quasi-sport, nothing on that network doesn't air elsewhere or couldn't be replaced with a Netflix subscription. I just feel like most cable channels are fairly generic and have programming that differs very little from other programming and that can be seen elsewhere at lower costs and in a more convenient way (for the DVR-less, anyhow).

Most sports are fairly generic and differ little. Hockey, football, soccer, & basketball are sports were one team takes an object from one side of the play area to the other in an attempt to score points.

 

[HanoverPretzel]

Most sports are fairly generic and differ little. Hockey, football, soccer, & basketball are sports were one team takes an object from one side of the play area to the other in an attempt to score points.

I understand the point you're trying to make, however people are very devoted to specific teams in specific sports and watching those games live is a huge part of the experience for them. Does someone watching Law and Order reruns really need to do it on the USA Network specifically rather than the other networks that air Law and Order reruns? If it came down to it, might they be happier buying a season set or two of Law and Order every month to have forever and watch and rewatch at their convenience than paying for cable or satellite for that purpose? I am not saying that it's not an added value to have shows like that to watch on Dish, even for a sports fan, I'm just saying there are so many different channels with the same shows, and so many different other ways to watch the shows, that it's less of an imperative, even if one were equally devoted to shows and sports teams, then to have the specific channels that show your teams' games live. You can't Netflix or stream (Unless you're out of market) the Orioles game, and a DVD set of Orioles games wouldn't really cut it, because part of the deal with sports is that they're live (Law and Order is never live, and reruns from years ago are even less live).

I'm just using Law and Order as an example here. I don't actually watch much of Law and Order, or particularly dislike it. We could talk about Two and a Half Men, too, which seems to air in reruns on two OTA stations locally plus on FX. And that doesn't count the new episodes on CBS. Like would people really feel put out if they could only see reruns of Two and a Half Men on two stations instead of three?

I watch new episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" sometimes, but I generally stream them. I don't even use my TV subscription to watch it now.

 

[PTVC]

I understand the point you're trying to make, however people are very devoted to specific teams in specific sports and watching those games live is a huge part of the experience for them.

I like baseball and hockey, but don't think its fair that all Dish subscribers pay for the MLB & NHL networks because I watch them. Sports channels should be a la carte, just like the International and premium movies channels are.

Does someone watching Law and Order reruns really need to do it on the USA Network specifically rather than the other networks that air Law and Order reruns? If it came down to it, might they be happier buying a season set or two of Law and Order every month to have forever and watch and rewatch at their convenience than paying for cable or satellite for that purpose?

USA does not show only reruns of Law & Order. Not including fake wrestling (no offense fake wrestling fans!), USA has seven original shows that can't be seen on ESPN or any other sports channel.

I am not saying that it's not an added value to have shows like that to watch on Dish, even for a sports fan, I'm just saying there are so many different channels with the same shows, and so many different other ways to watch the shows, that it's less of an imperative, even if one were equally devoted to shows and sports teams, then to have the specific channels that show your teams' games live. You can't Netflix or stream (Unless you're out of market) the Orioles game, and a DVD set of Orioles games wouldn't really cut it, because part of the deal with sports is that they're live (Law and Order is never live, and reruns from years ago are even less live).

Sports channels are an added value to those who like and/or watch sports on TV, otherwise they are worthless to non-sports watching subscribers. Wouldn't it be easier for sports fans to go to sports bars to watch live sporting events? Certain sports, like MiLB, stream games online.