So what happens when the Deathstar takes over Time Warner?
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Dish buys programming access from Time Warner aka TBS, TNT, HBO etc..
Doesn’t DTV(ATT now) lease space from Dish on certain orbitals? Also, DTV partners with dish(Echostar) for HughesNet. Everybody is a customer of everybody...
Oh yeah, call in and they can't service you they'll bundle you with Hughes in a few keystrokes.
Salespeople don't give many details on the service itself. More often than not people unwittingly signup thinking it's no different from cable or DSL. In reality it's mediocre on its best day, the advertised speed is only good for whatever low data plan you signup on & then is throttled. The high latency and packet loss sky rocket on bad weather days. Cord cutters are quickly disappointed.
Maybe Directv leased space from Dish long ago, but if they did it was at least a decade ago. Directv owned HughesNet long ago, but sold them in 2005 and haven't had any involvement since.
The only possible Dish/Directv customer relationship I can think of is if Dish carried any of the former Root Sports Net RSNs, which Directv owned. They were rebranded AT&T Sports Net after AT&T bought Directv.
Even after the purchase of TW is finalized Dish won't be a customer of "Directv", they'll be a customer of AT&T. Which they probably already were, it is almost impossible to imagine they don't have some fiber circuits somewhere in the country provided by AT&T, and could have a corporate cell phone plan run by AT&T etc. I don't think AT&T thinks of Dish as their major competitor like Directv and Dish thought of each other - they consider Comcast and Verizon their major competitors...so probably no reason to believe AT&T will go out of their way to screw over Dish.
Directv still bundles HughesNet internet for rural customers.. they bundle Viasat too.
No more Viasat bundling with Dish. That ended several months ago.
OK, here's how that would play out. The MVPD (AT&T, DISH, Comcast, whoever) tells the local channels, "We're not paying what you're demanding, so we'll just drop your channel from our line-up." And then a lot of subscribers would flee from that MVPD to another one (or to a vMVPD like YouTube TV or Hulu with Live TV if it DOES carry their locals). It would really hurt the MVPD because local stations affiliated with ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox account for about 30% of all viewers across all channels (broadcast + cable). (See viewer numbers here.) Those are, by far, the four most popular networks in the country and people very much want access to their programming.
Sure, those local stations affiliated with the big broadcast nets are available for free but only IF you go to the hassle of using an antenna to receive them (and given the type of OTA transmission system the US uses, our signals are often not very reliable or easy to get with an indoor antenna). And even if you do, those free OTA channels won't be integrated in with the rest of your channels on your cable box. And you won't be able to record shows from the free OTA channels unless you have a separate OTA DVR (e.g. TiVo, Tablo, etc.), which relatively few folks are going to bother with.
The locals know that a big majority of their viewers are paying for the convenience of receiving them via an MVPD. And if too many Americans "cut the cord" by ditching MVPDs/vMVPDs and instead embrace free OTA reception, that would cause a major decrease in retransmission fees for locals and their big network partners. If that happened, my guess is that the big networks would just walk away from their local affiliates. Disney (ABC), Comcast (NBC), CBS and Fox aren't going to give away their content for free to too many people. There's too much money to lose by doing that. They'd just switch to being national pay cable channels with OTT streaming operations too, basically the same way that HBO and Showtime operate (although maybe with lower subscription prices offset by advertising).
You can Integrate OTA with dish equipment. And record on your Hopper...
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