Dish Stuns Industry By Losing Subs By Phillip Swann TVPredictions.com
http://www.tvpredictions.com/dishsubs080910.htm Washington, D.C. (August 9, 2010) -- Dish Network surprised the industry today by announcing that it lost subscribers in the second quarter of 2010. The satcaster revealed that it lost 19,000 net subscribers in the quarter, compared to a gain of 26.000 subscribers in last year's second quarter. Dish blamed increased competition from rivals such as DIRECTV and increased customer churn, the number of subscriber cancellations. Dish and DIRECTV have been engaged in a war of words over issues such as pricing and channel counts, played out in counter advertisements in print and on TV. DIRECTV just announced that it added 100,000 subscribers in the second quarter, although that marked the fourth straight quarter in which DIRECTV added fewer subscribers than it did in the previous year's time period. This was the first time in a year that Dish lost subscribers in a financial quarter. Reuters reports that Wall Street analysts were taken aback by the Dish Network losses. "In the big picture, they were mixed. On a financial basis, they beat most of estimates but they lost subscribers," said Collins Stewart's Thomas Eagan. Despite the sub loss, revenues rose nine percent to $2.17 billion; analysts had predicted that the satcaster's revenue would hit $3.13 billion for the quarter. Dish now has 14.3 million subscribers. The company's stock was in decline Monday morning on today's news. Swanni Sez Why is Dish losing subs? Simple. The satcaster's decision to take on DIRECTV in a head-to-head advertising campaign was a huge mistake. DIRECTV's counter ads have been extremely effective, hurting Dish's brand with new consumers in particular. That's why DIRECTV is still adding subs (albeit not as fast as it used to; it has been hurt by the ad campaign, too) and why Dish is now losing them. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
