Good News For Dish Network

As I was getting ready to work on today’s edition of The Satellite Dish here at MultiChannel.COM a PDF appeared in my email that spelled good news for Dish Network and their customers who subscribe to Distant Networks from National Programming Service.

As you might remember back in October 20, 2006 a permanent injunction was issued against Dish Network for carrying Distant Network signals to their customers who could not receive their networks (ABC, CBS, FOX & NBC) via an off air antenna.  This injunction would have shut off networks for many Dish Network customers.  Two days before the injunction took place Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen pulled out an ace in the hole and announced that he was leasing a transponder to National Programming Service.  This arrangement would allow Dish Network customers to purchase their distant networks from NPS and continue to receive distant networks on their Dish Network equipment.

The networks were not to happy about this move by Dish Network and went to court to stop Dish Network from leasing space to NPS.

Today however the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued  an opinion stating that “EchoStar is not in violation of the injunction.”

In addition the court stated that it was undisputed that Echostar has lost all revenue earned through selling distant networks to customers at the cost of $25 million per year.  Dish is currently being paid by NPS a rent payment of $150,000 per month to lease a single transponder to NPS, but Dish has no control of the pricing, billing or collection of payments for distant network programming. 

Simply put I believe that this document says that indeed Dish Network / Echostar is out of the distant network business and thus is not in violation of the court ordered injunction.

Hopefully now we can put this lawsuit to rest, after all Dish Network customers just want to watch television.