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Senior Vice President of Sales for DISH was on RFD TV live today after the London parade and at the begining of the Tournament of Roses Parade. RFD TV talked about how DISH has been the leader for rural America, helping the FFA etc and talked about they had to fight to get RFD and Cowboy on other carriers in the earlier interview. Ahmed commented (paraphrasing this quote) "As you know we will not abandon rural America." And apparently DISH is involved in getting the rural communications act passed.

With that last sentence in mind could that be why the Cowboy channel is now in about all the packages? This is what if ever passed the Rural Communications Act would provide.....
Rural America be represented by at least one channel and be included or available from the lowest package.

Is there meaning there? Just the fact RFD had a live representative from DISH there, and with it looking like Directv is not in it for the long run at least with At&t owning it, and the Cowboy channel now in most of the packages though we don't know why or for how long, is DISH sending a message?

In this link aside from the Rural aspect it shows the progression of takeovers and how it affects programming and is revealing..

RFD-TV Needs Your Help to Protect Rural Programming!

"May, 2012 - Comcast Acquires MSNBC

August, 2013 - Comcast Cable drops RFD-TV in Colorado & New Mexico despite huge customer outcry.

February, 2014 - Comcast attempts to acquire Time Warner & Brighthouse cable

May, 2014 - House Judiciary Sub Committee on Comcast/Time Warner merger takes place where David Cohen, VP Comcast, states "Comcast is primarily an urban clustered cable company" when queried by Chairman Backus on why the drop of rural content in Colorado & New Mexico. In the follow up filing to explain how Comcast is providing rural content, old tv series including "Gunsmoke," "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Dukes of Hazzard" were listed as examples of rural content carried by other cable channels on Comcast cable systems to serve the rural market.

April, 2015 – Comcast drops its bid to acquire Time Warner Cable.

July, 2015 – AT&T acquires DIRECTV making it the largest pay tv provider in the world.

February, 2016 – Verizon FiOS TV drops all rural programming, including RFD-TV, the Weather Channel, and the Sportsman's channel on all cable systems serving 5.5m homes.

March, 2016 – the FCC opens a Notice Of Inquiry for independent cable channels. During a 30-day public comment period, over 202,000 individual comments were filed asking the FCC to insure that rural programming be protected in light of all of the consolidation taking place in the cable industry.

April, 2016 – Frontier Communications acquires Verizon FiOS TV systems in California, Texas, & Florida and refuses to reinstate RFD-TV programming despite many customer requests.

May, 2016 – Charter acquires Time Warner Cable and Brighthouse Cable making it the 2nd largest cable operator controlling 25 million homes in 41 states.

March, 2018 – Conditions attached to the Comcast/MSNBC merger expire, which included the requirement for Comcast to add ten (10) new independent channels. Comcast subsequently drops RFD-TV in all remaining states including Kentucky/Tennessee in April, Florida, Virginia, and Vermont in May, and finally Utah and other states in June.

June, 2018 – AT&T Acquires Time Warner, Inc. WATCH TV is launched without any rural programming channel included, a first for DIRECTV."