How so? What restrictions were put on them?
I see you avoided my other post. Are you going to avoid answering this one also?
VOOM Goes BOOM - update Dish Drops all 15 VOOM Channels
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How so? What restrictions were put on them?
I see you avoided my other post. Are you going to avoid answering this one also?
If Voom had a quality product that people (majority not minority) wanted I am sur they would still be around. They couldn't even survive on Cablevision. Obviously Voom wasn't pulling in enough viewers to keep them on life support.
Both parties were equally culpable in crafting, and signing, the Affiliation Agreement. VOOM thought they could find others to license the entire 15-channels lineup...they didn't, so they decided to bleed E* for the entire 15-years (under the terms of the agreement); E* thought VOOM would start licensing some of their channels to other MSOs and E* would enjoy similar terms and collect royalties on their 20% ownership...it didn't happen, so they decided it was cheaper in the long-run to terminate the agreement and litigate the matter in court. It is not clear who win this case, but there is plenty of blame to go around. Offhand, I think VOOM will prevail in the courts, but their payout will be much less than expected. We shall see...
Wrong - that's not how tv works. Even a majority popular show can be cancelled and has been many times in the past. Viewer popularity is only one of several keystones to studio and producer success.
Voom had a LOT of high quality product - much higher quality than the typical crap we get shoveled onto us today chopped all to crap and edited.
You just hate Voom and can't see anything through an objective viewpoint. Most of your posts don;t deserve comment because they are garbage but a few of us refuse to let lies and crap ruin the ONLY thread we are allowed to have discussing Voom and Dish Network.
If you read the last few days posts you would already know what those restrictions were.
Voom was relatively expensive per sub but an expense many people would pay to have those channels back. Charlie had his own opinions and voiced them in conversations documented already which you can read here on the forum and he decided he needed to do something else with the money Dish was supposed to pay for Voom.
The vast majority of TV Dish provides today is crap and have fewer viewers than Voom ever had BUT those channels are also dirt cheap / should be free. Look at the latest list of Coming Soon HD Channels. Maybe 2 or 3 are worth looking at occasionally and the rest are garbage channels that are very cheap for Dish to provide and will aid in the We Are The HD Leader marketing campaign.
There is nothing on TV today anywhere that shows anything that approaches the quality of the programming provided by Voom except maybe some PBS content.
It's too bad the two companies wouldn't work together to make Voom successful but instead worked against each other.
They did have plenty of customers...up to 95% of all DishHD customers under the Affliation Agreement. E* decided to illegally re-tier the VOOM channels on 1 February 2008, which facilitated the lawsuit. Of course, I do agree that people should not pay for programming they don't want...make it illegal to bundle channels (e.g., the 19 channels Viacom lineup currently being disputed with Time-Warner), subscriptions are sold to individual customers and not to the MSOs (E*, D*, FiOS, Comcast, etc.), and MSOs make money through efficience and services (DVR, EPG, Slingbox like features, etc.). Consumers pay for the content they want, they don't subsidize others programming, the "fluff channels" (non-public service type) will either improve or go out-of-business, and the customers ultimately set the price of each channel, if anything.
A la carte is consumer friendly...it's too bad the lobbyist (NAB, NCTA, programmers) have deep pockets and own so many lawmakers in the House and Senate.
If you read the last few days posts you would already know what those restrictions were.
Voom was relatively expensive per sub but an expense many people would pay to have those channels back. Charlie had his own opinions and voiced them in conversations documented already which you can read here on the forum and he decided he needed to do something else with the money Dish was supposed to pay for Voom.[/QUOTE]
Many? How many? Just because you want it back doesn't mean that most would be willing to pay more.
I would guess that those channels are a lot cheaper than Voom. Just because you think something is crap doesn't mean that everyone thinks it's crap. Since Dish is a business then if they can get more channels that people will watch for a cheaper price then it was a smart move.
Again your opinion maybe Voom should have modeled themselves after PBS and asked for donations. Maybe then they would still be around.
Voom was relatively expensive per sub but an expense many people would pay to have those channels back. Charlie had his own opinions and voiced them in conversations documented already which you can read here on the forum and he decided he needed to do something else with the money Dish was supposed to pay for Voom.[/QUOTE]
Many? How many? Just because you want it back doesn't mean that most would be willing to pay more.
I would guess that those channels are a lot cheaper than Voom. Just because you think something is crap doesn't mean that everyone thinks it's crap. Since Dish is a business then if they can get more channels that people will watch for a cheaper price then it was a smart move.
Again your opinion maybe Voom should have modeled themselves after PBS and asked for donations. Maybe then they would still be around.
I would be willing to pay more for Voom. In fact, I was, as evidenced by the fact that I didn't drop to the cheaper HD pack when they separated them. I'm thinking about dropping it now though, because everything else on there is crap. Smithsonian has more re-runs than Voom ever had!
Why are you posting in this thread, again?
Why are you posting in this thread, again?
Are you so thick headed that you can not see past your odd love of Voom. When given the option to pay less and not get voom people were taking the pay less option.
Voom had a LOT of high quality product - much higher quality than the typical crap we get shoveled onto us today chopped all to crap and edited.
I hate Voom management and how they killed voom. They had about 5 channels worth of content, stretched it to 15, barely ever gave us new content and continually repeated it in 5 hour blocks. They failed as a stand alone then failed on Dish and finally died a slow death on cablevision. You should be mad that they didn't have the foresight to fix themselves.
Oh, and the title of this thread is still Voom Goes Boom. So if you see any lies point them out. Lies not thing that you don't agree with. Other wise I have every right to post here.
If Voom does win, it will depend on how big the payout is. It could turn in to a win for Dish and a loss for Voom. It could be much less then Dish would have had to pay for the rest of the agreement and could wind up saving Dish millions of dollars.
Otherwise if Dish wins it was a very poor gamble for Voom.
Without going back and reading through the whole thread, wasn't dish also suing voom for their 20% ownership?
The 95% is when there was only 1 tier. What was the percentage after people were given the option.
The term "Tier" means nothing to the agreement since it is up to Dish Network how they sell their programming packs. However, (don't quote me on this) VOOM had to be available to 95% (penetration requirement) of all DishHD subs during the first year, and at least something like 81% during the 15th year of the contract. It is almost impossible for E* to create HD Tiers without including VOOM in the basic package in order to meet the penetration requirement. I think the figures thrown out there (court filings) were 200k HD subs in 2005, 2M HD subs in 2008, and up to 11M DishHD subs by 2015. Additionally, E* was paying something like $3.25 to VOOM per HD subscriber in 2005 (1st year)...with annual increases to where they would be paying VOOM close to $6.50 per subscriber per month in the 2020 (final year of the contract).
Let's assume E* has 11M sub (VOOM's estimate) in 2015 (makes sense since everything is going digital and HD) and the penetration rate is 85% and E* is paying $4.85 per HD sub per month (quick ballpark estimate). That means E* would be paying VOOM 45.35 million dollars per month or more than 544 million dollars per year. Yikes! As much as I like VOOM, it is not worth 544 million dollars which, under the terms of the Affiliation Agreement, E* would be required to pay in 2015 and beyond.
Also, it was posted elsewhere that ESPN will take in more than 2.5 billion in retrans revenue in 2009. Assuming VOOM were carried by all MSOs under the same terms as their agreement with E*, they would expect to rake-in over 6 billion dollars in retrans revenue in 2015. This is just an in-the-ballpark estimate, but hopefully you can see what a bad deal this was for E*. I think E* assumed that VOOM would give them a huge competitive advantage the first 2-3 years (it didn't), that they could share royalties or enjoy more favorable terms when the VOOM channels were mass-marketed like the AMC, IFC and WE (it never happened). Instead, no cable operators had room or VOOM's 15-channel lineup, nobody wanted to pay 3.25-6.50 for VOOM (premium price when HD was no longer a premium service), and VOOM decided E* was their Sugar Daddy so they turned their attention to developing International markets. I am sure this pissed-off Mr. Ergen like you couldn't imagine.
This really is a simple matter...did VOOM meet the "Spend Requirement"? If so, then E* violated Section 4 of the Affiliation Agreement by re-tiering VOOM on 1 Febuary 2008 and subsequently illegally terminating the agreement. The courts will then have to compensate VOOM for the remaining 12 years of the contract, legal fees, and damages.
If VOOM did not meet the Spend Requirement, E* was within their right to terminate the agreement and VOOM will have to pay legal fees and damages. Offhand, I cannot see how Rainbow Media management would be so careless since it was in their best interested to meet all obligations in order to enjoy the huge payday that was coming.
The way I see it is that VOOM had no reason not to meet the spend requirement, and E* had every reason to break the agreement after VOOM would not renegotiate more favorable terms. To be honest, even if E* loses in court...it will probably cost them far less than paying VOOM for another 12-years.
LOL! No...no Voom-hating trolls in this board...none what so ever...
we can all sleep well an night knowing there are no Voom-hating, negative, and war-mongering Voom-hating trolls here...
LOL! Not at all...
Look...'some people', have an issue...maybe a member of Voom's senior staff had a affair with someone or ran over the family dog with their car...who knows...but all we do know...we have no Voom hating trolls here...
we can all sleep well an night knowing there are no Voom-hating, negative, and war-mongering Voom-hating trolls here...
LOL! Not at all...
Look...'some people', have an issue...maybe a member of Voom's senior staff had a affair with someone or ran over the family dog with their car...who knows...but all we do know...we have no Voom hating trolls here...
Just scanned the court filings...VOOM said there was a "Packaging Comittment" that called for VOOM to be available in E*'s most widely distributed HD programming pack...moving VOOM into a higher tier violated this packaging committment and, in all likelihood, the penetration obligation. E* didn't dispute the packaging or penetration requirements...just that they didn't violate them.
Factoid of the Day...
In my mind, this pretty much sums up the entire case:
"In the end, EchoStar is a sophisticated multi-billion dollar corporation that knowingly negotiated and signed the Affiliation Agreement, including its Packaging and Penetration Commitments and its payment obligations. EchoStar should be held to the deal it made. EchoStar had no right to terminate the Affiliation Agreement on the basis of a trumped-up and pretextual claim of breach simply because it no longer liked the deal it struck."
VOOM is dead because of the Affiliation Agreement and the parties involved. With partners like these, who needs enemies. Finally, I have come to believe that even if VOOM wins in the courts, they are more apt to take the money and run. VOOM DBS (a brilliant idea) died because it was poorly timed and badly executed; VOOM HD died because of the greedy knuckleheads involved (both E* and V*), and VOOM probably won't reappear even if Rainbow wins big.
In my mind, this pretty much sums up the entire case:
"In the end, EchoStar is a sophisticated multi-billion dollar corporation that knowingly negotiated and signed the Affiliation Agreement, including its Packaging and Penetration Commitments and its payment obligations. EchoStar should be held to the deal it made. EchoStar had no right to terminate the Affiliation Agreement on the basis of a trumped-up and pretextual claim of breach simply because it no longer liked the deal it struck."
VOOM is dead because of the Affiliation Agreement and the parties involved. With partners like these, who needs enemies. Finally, I have come to believe that even if VOOM wins in the courts, they are more apt to take the money and run. VOOM DBS (a brilliant idea) died because it was poorly timed and badly executed; VOOM HD died because of the greedy knuckleheads involved (both E* and V*), and VOOM probably won't reappear even if Rainbow wins big.
Thing is, Dish contends (and I agree) that Dish did hold to the deal it made. The affiliation agreement clearly required Voom to do certain things. Rather or not they did is up to the court. But again, simply quoting what Voom says does not make it a fact. Sounds like Voom didn't like the deal it struck, either, if they didn't follow it's guidelines.
I never stated this was a "fact". Instead, I clearly titled the post "factoid" which is unsubstantiated information being presented by VOOM as fact. The only thing I mentioned is their version of the story seems plausible, and their statements follow known facts and common sense.
VOOM probably didn't like having their "hands tied" when there were no other takers for the entire 15-channel VOOM lineup...however, I get the feeling they were quite content milking their cash cow (E*) for the next 12-years. According to VOOM, they were required to spend more than 500 milllion on VOOM service the first few years, but the contract would start to turn a profit in 2009. Offhand, I don't know why VOOM would not be happy with profits from 2009-2020. What's not to like?
Also, when you mentioned that VOOM didn't follow [its] guidelines...you're stating this as fact when it clearly a contested issue.
On a related issue...
...disputes with local broadcasters, like KTEN, and cable network programmers (e.g., Lifetime, GolTV, etc.) all sound the same and therefore lend credibility to VOOM's statement regarding E*'s tactics to force a better deal or concoct reasons to terminate the affiliation agreeement. From the KTEN website:
"We certainly don't want to lose any of our viewers. We worked diligently to come to an agreement with DISH, in fact we were available until the final minutes of our agreement in hopes of working out a fair agreement with them. DISH remained unwilling to negotiate with us, unfortunately, DISH has decided, instead to inconvenience their subscribers by removing KTEN and resorting to tactics aimed at forcing KTEN to accept their unreasonable terms." Hmmmm...where have we heard this before?
As filed with the New York State Unified Court System: "Since the middle of 2007, EchoStar has been dissatisfied with its payment obligations under the Affiliation Agreement, and tried to fabricate a basis for avoiding its commitments to VOOM HD. In particular, EchoStar manufactured various alleged breaches of the Affiliation Agreement that would give rise, according to EchoStar, to a termination right under the Affiliation Agreement. But these vague and often unspecified claims of breach were patently baseless and were conceived merely as pretext for pressuring VOOM HD to relinquish its valuable and enforceable contract rights. Indeed, EchoStar has candidly told VOOM HD on more than one occasion that EchoStar needed to change the deal it struck under the Affiliation Agreement, and that EchoStar would find a means to do so."
You be the judge...
BTW, now that VOOM contact has been terminated (May, 2008), I am sure all DishHD customers are saving the $3.25 - $4.00 E* was paying VOOM each month...right?
...disputes with local broadcasters, like KTEN, and cable network programmers (e.g., Lifetime, GolTV, etc.) all sound the same and therefore lend credibility to VOOM's statement regarding E*'s tactics to force a better deal or concoct reasons to terminate the affiliation agreeement. From the KTEN website:
"We certainly don't want to lose any of our viewers. We worked diligently to come to an agreement with DISH, in fact we were available until the final minutes of our agreement in hopes of working out a fair agreement with them. DISH remained unwilling to negotiate with us, unfortunately, DISH has decided, instead to inconvenience their subscribers by removing KTEN and resorting to tactics aimed at forcing KTEN to accept their unreasonable terms." Hmmmm...where have we heard this before?
As filed with the New York State Unified Court System: "Since the middle of 2007, EchoStar has been dissatisfied with its payment obligations under the Affiliation Agreement, and tried to fabricate a basis for avoiding its commitments to VOOM HD. In particular, EchoStar manufactured various alleged breaches of the Affiliation Agreement that would give rise, according to EchoStar, to a termination right under the Affiliation Agreement. But these vague and often unspecified claims of breach were patently baseless and were conceived merely as pretext for pressuring VOOM HD to relinquish its valuable and enforceable contract rights. Indeed, EchoStar has candidly told VOOM HD on more than one occasion that EchoStar needed to change the deal it struck under the Affiliation Agreement, and that EchoStar would find a means to do so."
You be the judge...
BTW, now that VOOM contact has been terminated (May, 2008), I am sure all DishHD customers are saving the $3.25 - $4.00 E* was paying VOOM each month...right?
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