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Good News, Bad News
August 2, 2008

Dish Network is a funny company.  Whenever Dish Network releases good news its getting to the point now to expect bad news to follow shortly after.

With all the “Turbo Charging” going on this week at Dish Network customers were happy to see the company moving in a positive direction, however the same night the happiness was gone and for some anger was starting to show.

Man soccer fans noticed on Friday that one of their favorite soccer channels was dropped without warning from the Dish Network lineup.  The channel removed was GolTV a channel that features nothing but wall to wall soccer.  On GolTV’s website at www.goltv.tv there is a notice there for Dish Network customers stating “Effective August 1, 2008, GolTV is no longer available on the Dish Network. This occurs despite efforts to continue GolTV’s availability to Dish Customers.  Many soccer fans were already mad at Dish Network as earlier in the year another channel that carried mostly soccer, VOOM’s “WorldSport HD” channel was that channel.

Doing a search of the Dish Network website has no mantion of GolTV’s Removal. However tuning to the channel where GolTV and pressing the info button on the remote Dish has the following message for their customers, “GolTV has removed this channel after asking for unreasonable terms to renew the contract and we’re working to solve the problem.”

More bad news for some Dish customers on Friday, as some woke up and found some of their locals missing.  Dish Network is in a contract disputer with Citadel Communications.  The channels removed were WHBF a CBS Affiliate from Davenport, Iowa; KCAU a ABC affiliate from Sioux City, Iowa; KLKN an ABC affiliate from Lincoln, Nebraska; and WOI an ABC affiliate from Des Moines, Iowa.

As always Dish Network will claim that they are trying to get the best deal for their customers.  I don’t buy this, while they may be trying to get the best price they can I don’t see it be reflected in the customers’ bills as side-by-side Dish Network and DirecTV almost cost the same thing.  I also can’t remember DirecTV ever removing a channel because of contract negations. 

And that news may not be the worst news coming for Dish Network, as Wall Street is waiting to see Dish Networks earnings report, which is due to be released on Monday. Many industry analysts expect that Dish Network will have their first ever subscriber loss. If this is true then there is definitely something wrong at Dish Network.

As I said before, history seems to show that Dish Network always seem to release really good and exciting news… just before they release some bad news. 

It looks like history could be repeating itself again.

Posted by Scott Greczkowski on August 2, 2008 | Comments (15)