And given the RSNs weren't even (reportedly) asking for an increase, Dish may be drawing a big, fat line in the sand on channels that don't get broad viewership. This could take a while.
It's coming up that.
I think it's a calculated move on the part of Dish.
First of all consider that half of all the customers are on AT120. Then figure all the customers who have AT200 or AT250 and actually watch the channels.
Then you have the percentage of customers who may watch the RSN, but don't care it's missing vs the customers who will actually cancel.
When the Viacom channels first went down about 15 years or so ago, it was so bad with the customer complaints, the channels came back 3 days later.
When OLN, Lifetime and AMC went down, the stations where down for over a month.
If customers don't seem to care, the channel will stay down longer till they can negotiate a better deal.
I think the RSN's May come down for good this time. Dish has already done it with HBO, and they have been hinting towards dropping RSN's for years.
Unfortunately Directv does not have the luxury to drop any sports, as their whole business model has been built around providing the most sports programming.
The biggest impact with Dish will be their commercial customers. But then I don't know vary many sports bars that are dumb enough to get Dish Installed in the first place