Water Channel? - Rant

[SummitAdvantageRetailer]

OLN will be back. I've not seen a channel leave DISH for good except for that SBS fiasco. Well, TV Azteca too, but that's also another international channel. With the Viacom and Disney contract disputes, DISH eventually negotiated a new contract within days (2 days for Viacom). I'd put OLN's outage to be about 1 week or so. And they're not doing this alone (Time Warner as well) so DISH has more leverage than Comcast at this point.

Um. No. Dish chose to remove the channel if it wasn't going to include the NHL games.

Not exactly. OLN provides the NHL programming to cable/dbs providers that have OLN in a tier that is available to a minimum number of subs, I've heard 40%. For those providers that keep OLN in a more exclusive tier, like AT180, they insert alternate outdoor-themed programming during the NHL games. Charlie chose to drop OLN if it didn't get NHL at the AT180 tier.

Sure, OLN will make more money at AT120. But, it will only be pennies per Dish sub. The real revenue increase will come from advertising dollars based upon increased viewership.

Personally, I think that Charlie doesn't want anyone telling him what to do; he wants the NHL programming on his terms (it's a HUGE carrot to get people to upgrade to AT180); and if they don't like that, he's taking his ball and going home. Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh. :river

By the way, OLN was on AT180 for a long time, BEFORE NHL was to come on. You can't expect E* to drop their pants and bend over just because Comcast demanded OLN to demand the Pay-TV carriers to put their channel on the lowest basic digital tier. If they saw the placement of OLN on Time Warner on a Sports Tier and DISH on AT 180 before the NHL carriage, then who's the one strong-arming who? Give DISH about a week or so, a month at tops. It will not be gone for good.