The problem is they keep decreasing their competitive advantages and keep increasing their disadvantages.....
1080p VOD sounds good, but it won't keep anyone from switching.
The day in day out channels determine that.... Sunday Ticket, NASCAR, and Extra Innings are huge disadvantages that keep the sports fans at bay. Charlie, you just shivved the soccer fans by yanking GOL 2 months after you killed Voom's Worldsport. Hockey and Basketball have their fans, but I bet many of them are baseball, football, and/or soccer fans also, so they will switch to D* to get those.
You are now getting creamed on VOD as you can count on 1 or two hands the number of free programs that you can access now (the TV entertainment stuff that is esoteric at best). The infrastructure is there now as you can download it over the ethernet line for those with broadband access, so greed is the only thing holding you back on this front.
Piracy? Please. These people AREN'T going to pay for it. You can zap them the night before the Super Bowl to make their life difficult, but that's it. Hackers will always find a way around your safeguards, but these are the small minority.
The economy? OK, fine... but household creation is still occurring, but it is being overwhelmed by the rising foreclosure rate. Therefore, your churn numbers should be spiking up, not having the net effect of your additions dropping into negative territory.
Bottom line, you killed Voom. You allowed DirecTV to get all the HD headlines. Your satellite failed to make orbit, so those wired in technology savants assumed your HD plans would be stalled and went elsewhere where the actual channels delivered was catching up to the promises of two years ago when you were cleaning THEIR clock. You've embraced the HD Lite standard as compression has been dialed way up. I watch a movie in HD on BluRay and watch a movie in HD on HBO and it is night and day..... Better than SD, but not HD. You're not alone here, Microsoft is doing the same thing with their XBox Live downloads in "HD". All 4 GB of it for a full movie..... Right.
What you've got left is the budget minded, those who REALLY love your DVR, and those with the affliction of Technology Inertia. They don't want to change because of the cost of hardware, the aggravation, or they just don't feel like learning a new system and channel grid. But that will hold them only so long. Right now, the DVR is the last thing keeping me in the fold (other than my 722 commitment which has another year or so.....). Fios is blowing you away on the picture front here. But I just got L610 on my 722 last night, and it was glitching something fierce. 4 Reboots needed just to get SNY HD to come on during the ballgame last night. Hopefully, things will stabilize tonight (the day after a new download is usually better for some reason if past experience is any indicator).
What can you do? Add free VOD like Comcast has which will drive up your pay tv subscriptions. Keep adding HD channels. Find a way to increase bandwidth so Picture quality improves. Start beta testing your software. REAL beta testing, not this alpha testing you do now that you call beta testing. STOP with the channel disconnects. If word got out that people aregoing to miss NBC this fall because you didn't want to pay the extra dime a month, you will trigger another mass exodus.
Either that, or you can try cashing out and merging again. XM and Siriius might have made you think you could do it, but they WILL slap you down again. Guaranteed. They really don't like you in Congress, and this XM/Sirius merger passed by one vote, so don't get cocky. I'd love all the bandwidth, but realistically the Feds won't let you do it. In rural America, you and D* are the only option. At least folks could use Ipods in their cars vs. Sirius.
