Dear Mr. Dolan,
On behalf of many Voom customers, CVC customers and shareholders, I'd like to thank you. When it came time to put your money where your mouth was, you personally voted to shut Voom down. Thank you for years of taking my CATV dollars as well as shareholder profits/dividends, and throwing them down a service you made a sinkhole. Thank you for rattling your saber and proclaiming you've come to the rescue of Voom employess and customers who liked this service. Thank you for promising CVC that you'd pick up the tab of running Voom, out of your personal funds, if the BoD granted you an extension to buy. Thank you for voting for the shutdown before you'd be liable for incurring those Voom operational charges. Your total lack of moxie, gusto, whatever adjective one would use to describe you prior to this is astounding. You could have told the truth. You could I have said I don't have dime 1 of funding. You could have said the cost of pointing dishes at AM-6 was too expensive. You could have never promised to cover shortfalls with your own cash. Of course, you didn't.
Now, Voom is dead. The lights are on until the utility company turns off the juice; but the building is empty. I think another CEO could have made this work. However, you were in the unenviable position of trying to push a service, while protecting your core business. You refused to add RSNs YOU OWNED, in either HD or SD. You even refused to put certain Voom services on your CATV system to at least show a fake positive cashflow (see ESPN and MNF). Just about every move you made set Voom up to fail. The rushed launch, buggy STBs, lack of SD favorites are but a part of a flawed plan. Voom's real asset, besides its HDTV programming, was a staff of dedicated people who you also screwed in the end. I don't lament the loss of Voom TV, as much as I hate to see people lose jobs.
You've been credited for far too long. HBO may have been your idea, but Time Inc. made it happen. Stringing CATV on Long Island 30 years ago was genius, but hardly a tough sell as people naturally dislike antennas. Outside of Optimum Online and your core CATV services, what have you achieved? As an Islander fan I beg you to please continue letting Jimmy do his fine job of running MSG.
I guess I ranted enough. Lord knows, by the micron of a chance you'll read this, you'll laugh. At the end of the day, you're still rich and in charge. I'll still look like the idiot for typing this. But hey, spouting off is cathartic, and my payment to Voom forces me to speak my mind. Enjoy my money for now. I'm itching to get FiOS in my area. It'll rock to be done with any Dolan operation (outside bundled channels), and really stick it to you.
