Charlie Chat Thoughts and More!
Dish Network CEO took to the air last night with his quarterly “Charlie Chat” television show, and instead of being Santa Charlie he was instead the Grinch who stole HD Christmas.
Instead of Charlie being the leader of the company with great news for his customers he instead showed people a list of HD channels that he “hoped” to add next year.
The channels listed on the slate were BET, CMT, Comedy Central, FX, Showtime, Nickelodeon, MTV, Spike TV, Speed Channel and VH1.
Dish already carries Showtime in HD, but is missing channels from the Showtime suite. Out of the list of channels only Spike TV and Speed Channel have any regular HD content. The rest of the channels do not show any HD content. MTV had its VMA’s in HD but all the replays shown were in standard definition.
Charlie then added insult to injury by saying that he wants to add channels where the majority of the programming on those channels is in HD, which in my mind wiped all of the channels that they just listed out of contention. (Click Here to Listen to Charlie’s Comments on new HD)
If Charlie is so dead set on getting HD channels with real HD content I would like to remind him that he had 15 channels of 24/7 pure HD on the VOOM HD Networks and got rid of them.
Dish Network is currently airing a special channel for its HD customers on channel 77 that tells customers about its HD offerings. In the commercial which has been airing for the past few months the commercial states “You now have access to over 100 national HD channels and up to 150 by the end of the year!” To me this is false advertising and a broken promise by Dish Network. From the sounds of last night’s Charlie Chat it will be sometime next year before Dish customers see any new HD. I wonder how many Dish Network customers have been holding on to Dish seeing what new HD would be added by the end of the year, and out of these customers how many will continue to wait for Dish to make good on its promises, and more importantly how many customers are going to leave because of the broken promises.
Dish needs to learn that you can only dangle the carrot in front of the horse for so long before that horse no longer wants that carrot. One can only hope that the ghosts of HD past, present and future will visit Charlie and Charlie Scrooge realizes the error of his ways in time to make everyone’s HD dreams bright this holiday season.
DirecTV Throws on a Swimsuit
Speaking of HD there is one thing that many men seem to enjoy more than HD television and that one thing is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
This year when flipping through the magazine people are going to notice more than the ladies in their swimwear; they are going to notice DirecTV.
DirecTV is going to be hard to miss in the magazine since it will be the only advertiser in the annual Sports Illustrated skintacular. The 72 pages magazine which goes on sale today will have 20 of its pages with DirecTV ads.
One thing will be clear, both that magazine and DirecTV do deliver some beautiful images. It might not be the HD that some DirecTV customers want, but I don’t think we will hear many complaints.
Eric Sahl Update
Last week reported that we were hearing rumblings that Dish Network Senior Vice President of Programming Eric Sahl would be leaving the company at the end of the year. While no one from Dish will officially confirm the rumor I am now hearing rumblings of who will be replacing Sahl when he leaves.
The information I am getting is that Dave Shull who is currently the SVP of Asia Operations will assume the SVP of programming duties.
In addition Chris Kuelling will assume the role of VP of International Programming.
Dish Network Satellite Launch Tomorrow
If you’re a Dish Network customer, it’s time once again to get your lucky rabbits foot out as tomorrow if all goes according to plan a new satellite will be launched into space.
The launch of CEIL II satellite is scheduled to blast of tomorrow morning at 8:43 AM Eastern Time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The satellite is scheduled to go to the 129 degree west orbital location and will allow Dish Network to offer more HD local into local cities as well as give customers a better signal from the 129 orbital location.
That does it for another jam packed edition of “The Satellite Dish” GO CIEL II!!
ME commented:
Really. What a load of crap. I went to our local Fisher station's website and there is a big banner ad to GET DIRECTV HERE NOW. CLICK NOW. There is more to this story between Fisher and Dish. This is the second time this has happened. Someone high up at one of the two companies obviously has a bone on for the other.
laa commented:
If you guts think that Washington viewers are going to pay you full price for only 2 of the 3 major networks, you must be nuts. Everyone I know is looking for a new provider. I watched your propoganda onthe channel that should be KOMO and want you to know that your prompt to e-mail "ceo@dishnetwork.com" is a joke. I challenge you to try this and see what comes up.
I could care less aboutyour dispute with Fisher-I will find another company that will give me full coverage.
Sunshine commented:
I just left Dish, what promise they have but no real leadership and their customer support, don't get me started. They have become a me-too. Voom was a big issue for me as I was an early subscriber as well and only went to Dish when they got it.
What we need is a new provider who really understand content and marries it to the best technology. At this point land or satellite wouldn't matter if someone could just get it right.
By the way no FIOS in Connecticut, except in two smaller communities, so not an option.
enjoyedvoom commented:
Interesting that you mention VOOM here, when you won't allow discussion on your site, but glad you pointed it out. Maybe Charlie will eventually see the error of his ways, unlikely as that might be.
jake commented:
I would like to know where is fox news and fox business channel tha already has hd charlie please get it
Isaac commented:
Scott Big thank you for acknowledging
that Chalie dropped 15 24 true HD content in Voom!!
Again Im out of contract. Bye Bye dish
Tim Grimm commented:
Matt: The people that complain about others complaining are the REAL whiners.
Kyle commented:
Also, I watch shows because I like the show, I don't watch them simply because they're in HD. If a show is in HD, good at least I can see it in HD then with the HD channel, but just because not all of the shows on the channel are available in HD yet doesn't make the HD channel worthless. The other alternatives are to stop the simulcast and just loop whatever few HD shows they have, which people have complained about in the past when Food and HGTV did it, Voom did it too and people compalined then too; or don't even bother going HD until most of the content is available in HD, preventing viewers from seeing what shows they DO have available in HD now; or drop the non-HD shows from the channel entirely, pissing off even more viewers who are fans of these shows.
As for MTV HD, the ability to air a live event in HD and the ability to rebroadcast the same event in HD are two different things that require different equipment in the control room, which is not available yet for all of their networks.
Kyle commented:
Nickelodeon DOES show HD content. Much of TEENick on weekends is in HD.
Matt commented:
Dish and Direct could add every HD channel there could possibly be or convert entirely to HD in the future and you still would not be happy! The whining and complaining.....unreal. Your site is far from perfect also and should resolve your own issues before complaining about others...
Tim Grimm commented:
Marcus: Some HD content is not the same as 24/7 HD content, or even the majority of the content.
Marcus commented:
FX has HD content. Comedy Central HD doesn't exist yet. Sarah Silverman and South Park are available in HD on Comcast On Demand to it's likely the channel will have HD programming. BET HD doesn't exist yet.
Tim Grimm commented:
Good point re the VOOM Networks Scott. Charlie was being pretty hypocritical there.
I left Dish when they dropped the VOOM Networks and switched to DirecTV. Now I'm leaving DirecTV for FiOS because FiOS has 43 premium movie channels in HD compared to DirecTV's 15.
I think that both DirecTV and Dish are screwing up by not adding more true national HD content (PPVs and RSNs don't count!).
