Dish Preparing To Serve Up ‘nutv’?

It’s appearing more and more likely that “nutv” will be the brand that Dish Network will apply to its upcoming over-the-top subscription video service that’s being tailored for a small but growing group of cord-cutters and cord-nevers.  

GigaOm, which ironically used to run an news site focused on the emerging online video market under the NewTeeVee label, reported Tuesday that the Dish Digital unit has recently filed several trademarks for the nutv brand, including a possible logo (pictured above). The report also points out that the nutv brand, which carries the pseudo mark of “New TV,” according to a recent trademark filing, has also begun to show up in Dish Digital’s existing apps.

It’s not the first time Dish has danced with the brand. In 2013, when its OTT service was still considered a rumored offering in-the-making, Dish filed for a trademark on “NÜTV.” More than a year later, it appears that the umlaut is now out of style.

But even without the umlaut, it still looks like “nut-v” at first glance to me, so Dish might still have a bit of a branding challenge on its hands if it indeed goes forward with that as the brand of its OTT offering. But differentiating the color of "nu" and "tv" helps. Some.

Then again, it’s possible that Dish will go in a different direction with the name of the service. Dish was not immediately available to comment on the latest filings that were uncovered by GigaOm. Update:  Dish declined to comment.

Still, the description associated with the latest nutv filings does mention the sort of things one might expect to get from Dish’s OTT service, including “downloadable movies, television series, [and] television programs,” as well as “webcasting, streaming and transmission of audio, video, subscription television and video-on-demand content via the internet and electronic communications networks.”

Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen said last month that the company should be able to launch its single-stream OTT offering by the end of the year, as it has already salted away streaming video rights with Walt Disney Co. and A+E Networks.

Time Warner Inc. chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes said in May that Dish’s coming OTT service will limit volumes to 5 million subs overall, then told analysts later in the year that his company is open to OTT service providers so long as they are “additive” to the media giant's current distribution relationships.

But some analysts have already begun to question whether the expected price point and anticipated smaller margins will give Dish’s OTT play much of a pay-off.