They would be losing money, even by increasing the cost of the channel, would have a greatly diminished viewing audience. Most channels I watch are because I landed on them. Not because I sought them out.
...and of course, Dish gave away free HBO and Cinemax to a lot of subscribers. So, in those subscribers' cases, HBO got 100% of $0.
Well, if that's the case, perhaps Dish should just go ahead and take down the info channels on 301 and 311, remove HDNet Movies from 300 and 310 when the free preview is scheduled to end at the end of this month, completely remove HBO and Cinemax from subscribers' bills instead of crediting it back, and stop jerking everyone around giving us all false hope by maintaining the status quo. They finally took the above steps for the Univision dispute, but of course they waited until announcing a price increase before making the Univision-related changes to the billing permanent. I am afraid that when Dish does the same thing for the HBO/Cinemax dispute, it will come with an announcement of yet another price increase.
You are right about most movies being available elsewhere, including purchased VOD movies directly from Dish. Perhaps that is Dish's strategy long-term: make deals with the movie studios to sell individual movies directly to subscribers, and cut out the middle man by dropping the premium movie services completely.
Well, if that's the case, perhaps Dish should just go ahead and take down the info channels on 301 and 311, remove HDNet Movies from 300 and 310 when the free preview is scheduled to end at the end of this month, completely remove HBO and Cinemax from subscribers' bills instead of crediting it back, and stop jerking everyone around giving us all false hope by maintaining the status quo. They finally took the above steps for the Univision dispute, but of course they waited until announcing a price increase before making the Univision-related changes to the billing permanent. I am afraid that when Dish does the same thing for the HBO/Cinemax dispute, it will come with an announcement of yet another price increase.
You are right about most movies being available elsewhere, including purchased VOD movies directly from Dish. Perhaps that is Dish's strategy long-term: make deals with the movie studios to sell individual movies directly to subscribers, and cut out the middle man by dropping the premium movie services completely.
You should know better than listen to a Dish CSR. They don’t know anything and just tell you what you want to hear.
I have had an informed CSR at times and their comments did indeed come true. I am not saying, they are all informed, but some do have some insight. It does make sense they would be working to get HBO/Cinemax back.
Never say never, we waited years to get Disney and some of the ESPN channels in HD. Those were a running joke around here for years, with them topping bluegrass and others' lists of channels they want in HD, over and over and over. The same happened for 24/7 RSNs. My bigger question is what returns first, HBO/Cinemax or Univision?
Well, if HBO/Cinemax doesn't return, what will Dish do with all that available satellite bandwidth/space?
