New HD Locals, DirecTV Earnings & More

This morning DirecTV rolled out additional HD locals to the following communities, Boise, ID; Fort Smith, AR; Macon, GA; Sioux Falls, SD; Traverse City, MI;  and Harlingen, Brownsville, TX.

DirecTV Earnings Announced

DirecTV announced its numbers for the third quarter today and they showed another rise in profits and it also showed that their costs are coming down.

Although the news was good for the nation’s largest satellite company the earnings did fall 2 cents a share short of predictions by industry analysts.

Customer churn was up slightly to 1.64%.

There was a new subscriber slowdown for the quarter, DirecTV added 156,000 customers in the quarter which is a slowdown from the last quarter where the satcaster signed up 240,000.

It should be very interesting to see the numbers from DirecTV’s rival Dish Network which I am predicting will announce its second straight subscriber loss.   On the last quarter earnings call Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen blamed the poor performance on the economy, but as we have seen here with DirecTV there is still positive growth in the industry. If Dish shows another loss of subscribers it’s not the economy that’s the problem, its poor management. (My opinion of course.)

Currently I view the two satellite companies much as I view the nation’s two biggest electronics stores.  DirecTV is Best Buy and Dish Network is Circuit City.  One is doing well in this poor economy while the other seems to be adrift at sea. Charlie Ergen needs to make some major changes and make them soon before its too late.

Sirius XM Changes Coming November 12^th

Looks like the rumored channel lineup changes are now officially coming to Sirius / XM on November 12^th. 

Over the past few days a number of channels have been announcing they are moving channel positions.  Also moving is “Cousin” Brucie Morrow who will be moving his show from Sirius channel 6 to Sirius channel 5.  Cousin Brucie also mentions that his show will also be heard on XM as well.  It is expected that the Sirius / XM decade’s channels will be combined and offered on both services.

However still no word yet on the fate of my favorite XM channels, Cinemagic.

Dish / NBA Negoations Continue

It appears that Dish Network is still working to come to a deal with the NBA over the NBA League Pass package.  The NBA League Pass while not available for order by Dish Network is still being offered in free preview mode for Dish Network customers.  It should be noted that no HD games have been shown yet in the NBA League Pass package on Dish Network.