Say What?
Just as I predicted today Dish Network announced their 3rd quarter earnings results and those results were not pretty. Dish Networks 3rd quarter profits slid 54 percent and for the second consecutive quarter the satellite company reported a net loss in customers. For the 3rd quarter Dish Network reported a net loss of 10,000 customers.
So for today’s Dish Network earnings call Dish Network CEO got up and blamed a number of things on the poor numbers, but the main one that Ergen repeated again and again on the earnings call was PIRARCY.
When I heard this my B.S. alarm went off in my head.
Well at least Charlie didn’t try blaming the economy; if he did I would have been really screaming. While the economy I slowing down things for the industry, DirecTV’s 3rd quarter numbers still showed nice growth with the economy as it is.
So instead Charlie is blaming Dish Networks issues on piracy by suggesting that customers are dropping their Dish Network service and are opting to use modified satellite receivers to steal Dish Networks signal. What a load of bunk.
In researching for this article I visited a number of satellite hacking websites to see what was going on in the deep dark world of satellite piracy. Besides feeling the need to go take a shower I also learned something interesting many pirates are sick of needing to reprogram their receivers on a constant basis and many of the big “hackers” are actually going legit and paying for their satellite service.
To show how blind Charlie Ergen is to what’s happening in his company and with his signal Charlie commented on today’s call that this satellite piracy has only been happening since spring of 2007. What an uninformed comment, as Dish Networks security system has been compromised since almost the beginning of the service.
Why has it taken Charlie Ergen 10 years to finally realize that his security system doesn’t work?
In fact reading these hacking sites had me understanding at one time by using a standard Dish Network receiver and a device called an AVR card pirates could program their AVR card once and watch TV for 6 to 9 months at a time without needed to reprogram their card once. And with that technology reprogramming meant just putting the card in a reader and sending the card a new set of keys. Once this was done pirates were again enjoying free satellite television again.
From the looks of things the security has improved since then and now when Dish Network takes a security measure it knocks out the pirates. Sometimes it knocks them out for a day and other times it takes a week or more for the pirates to develop a fix to the new security measures.
It is due to these new security measures that have been taken by Dish Network that have caused steeling the Dish Network signals not to be fun anymore and as the hacking forums indicate many of the pirates are throwing the towel and are actually paying for their service now.
In addition Dish Network is sending out new smart cards to customers which use a new security system, if there are any pirates out there toughing it out then soon they will be shut out of the system when the new security system is turned on. When this happens it will be back to square one for these pirates and it could take awhile for pirates to compromise the system and watch free satellite again.
DirecTV had a major piracy problem and changed its security system over 5 years ago, and the system has not been compromised yet. Charlie Ergen joked that he didn’t know how long it would be until the new security system would be cracked but mentioned that they have the next generation of security already waiting if this new security system is cracked.
Sorry Charlie, pirates are not to blame here, I can’t see anyone who is looking to lower their bills actually going and canceling their service to purchase a $200 hacked receiver which may or may not work for the next few months.
So what’s really wrong at Dish Network? In the next edition of The Satellite Dish I will attempt to point some fingers at what’s wrong at Dish Network. Stay Tuned!
Tech Chat Tonight
If you like knowing how things work, make sure you check out Dish Networks live Tech Chat tonight on Dish Network Channel 101 at 9PM ET.
On this edition of the Tech Chat we will be taken to the Dish Network uplink center and will be shown how they get television signals and how they get those signals to the millions of customers around the country.
dishshmish commented:
what's wrong with dish is that they've become to big for their britches. they no longer care about the customer, only about the stock price. charlie and jim have been watching the CNBC ticker for so long now that it's burnt into their brains, let alone the TV screen. the customer is no longer king. we are now just the peons.