EchoStar Lends a Hand

There are times when you realize satellites do much more then just provide television signals to us viewers in our homes. We forget how much we rely on satellite technology. From phone calls, to navigation satellites play a big roles in our daily lives.

No more is satellite technology needed but in Haiti where their entire communications setup was destroyed by the earthquake. With the lack of communication technology organizing the relief efforts has been a problem. But now thanks to the folks at EchoStar communications could get a little easier.

The folks at EchoStar have donated satellite communications service and bandwidth on its 121 degree West Longitude satellite so that relief agencies can establish an emergency channel. This satellite should be of good use to the aid agencies who will use it as it not only covers Haiti but all of the United States as well.

Sitting home and watching this tragedy has been hard for most of us as we feel hopeless, many of us have donated money or supplies to the relief effort, I feel its a great thing that EchoStar is pitching in and helping out. It just goes to show how important satellite communications is in this day an age. Hats off to EchoStar for helping the people of Haiti out in this crisis.

I am Not a Journalist

Writing here in MultiChannel has both a blessing and a curse for me, a blessing because I love sharing my love of this amazing satellite technology with everyone, but a curse because sometimes folks get mad at me for what I sometimes say here in my column.

When I write I write things from my view on the industry, and while many times my views are spot on other times I can admit that I am wrong.

“The Satellite Dish” is meant to be a blog with my thoughts on the industry, but as we have seen sometimes what I write here is more then my thoughts it is real news. Take for example a few weeks ago I broke the news here in “The Satellite Dish” about Dish Network’s upcoming price changes. I was the first anywhere to report the changes and ultimately what I posted was correct.

Because sometimes I do post news instead of my opinion some folks think that I should not be voicing my opinion here, while others think that I should keep the news coming from the real hard working reporters here at MultiChannel News. These are some of the eggshells I have writing this column for MultiChannel because some days its almost like I am damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

I don’t consider myself a journalist in the traditional sense. I have never taken a journalism class or follow some of the proper journalist etiquette. Hell some of the time I read things I wrote here and am shocked sometimes at what I typed here.

Truth be told normally when I am typing my blog I am working on 5 things at a time, people don’t understand that I work a regular job, plus run SatelliteGuys and then write these updates. In the past I use to be able to easily update the column and fix my grammar and spelling mistakes, but with system upgrades updating and fixing mistakes is not an easy thing to do without breaking things.

At CES I met with someone who was upset with me over something I wrote in my blog months ago and they were upset because they took what I said as something personal which has never been my intent. When I write something I write things from my point of view and when I see something wrong I report on it. And I got to be honest what I do report on things I don’t think about the fact that because I am writing my opinion it could hurt someone or even their job.

I report the good and bad about the industry (and wish I had a lot more good to report) but when I report the bad again I am doing it from my eyes as a consumer looking in. It is my hopes that when I report something bad that it gets noticed so that the issue can quickly get corrected, but then again my point of view is not always the correct point of view, as t hey always say there are always two sides to every story.

With that said I want to thank everyone who has read “The Satellite Dish” over the years and making it one of the most widely read regular features here on MultiChannel.COM. I might not be perfect nor am I a journalist by definition but I try to give you everything I got so you are better informed about the world of satellite. There now I got that off my chest.

Thanks for reading!