50 to 60 competitors for Dish, times are changing, what must Dish do to break out from the pack?
At the same time, Ergen sees the number of options available to customers continuing to expand. Whether it's more stand-alone OTT services or services offered by competing pay-TV providers, the Dish CEO sees competition continuing to grow. "10 years ago, he had three options," he told analysts. "Today he's got four or five or six options, and he's going to have 50 or 60 options in the future probably."
Sling TV is the company's best hedge against the growing competition, but it's not enough to hedge the losses of its old satellite business.
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I like this article ,because it shows us where old Charlie's head is at. He sees the market is changing and will keep changing and growing providing us with even more choices as a customer. But with the growth of choices ,there will continue to be less subs for the satellite part of DISH. IF DISH would find a way to provide the satellite sub with a way to watch their service, without all the extra miscellaneous FEEs, like the dvr fee, the additional receiver fees -assigned by different classes of receivers, they might see that more subs would stick around. After all , it hasn't just been the channel providers who have hiked their fees every year, it continues to run neck and neck with old Charlie and their various made up ,charge it because we can DISH fees. You can literally pay almost as much in fees as the lower programming packs if you have the hopper and the super joey and a couple of joeys and the dvr fee.
Imagine if Charlie decided to include the price of one joey at $7.00 with the hopper and did away with the $12.00 dvr fee? That would eliminate about $19.00 worth of fees . Now imagine you lowered the price of the other joeys down to $5.00 OR charge gradual fees that reduce the price as you add more receivers? Think what that would make the customer think about their DISH service. They would really think that they had something of value and what a deal. This is already happening with his latest new customer promo where you lock in the low price of $49.99 a month for two years and no dvr fees , no local fees, no hd fees etc.
IF DISH could add to that value by providing even smaller bundles of channels and eliminate the forced bundling of ESPN and the Regional Sports network in all lower programming packs , they might even keep more customers from cord cutting and trying the many growing alternatives to traditional satellite /cable bundles with all those extra FEES.
Charlie sees the writing on the walls ,but does he really have the vision to make the changes, that will keep customers with his more expensive satellite business. I would hate to think of all the money he has invested in all those satellites in space and all those receivers and the fact he is losing subs every quarter now. Even if he adds the Sling subs into his numbers ,they are still showing losses.