Any thoughts on why DISH doesn’t carry Ion Plus?

Venustus

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Nov 21, 2020
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Ion Plus is an great TV channel with good movies and seems to be carried by many of the cable carriers. Any idea why Dish doesn’t carry it? It carries Ion but not Ion Plus which is a very different type of channel.
 
Ion Plus is an great TV channel with good movies and seems to be carried by many of the cable carriers. Any idea why Dish doesn’t carry it? It carries Ion but not Ion Plus which is a very different type of channel.
They don't even carry ION in HD.
 
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From when I last looked at ION+Plus it was a binge channel that played something like a very few TV series (like Rookie Blue) a few days of the week for several hours episodes. There was very little variety and I found NO SHOWS of any interest to me.

On the other hand, MeTV and H&I do have greater variety of shows and airs them in mostly strip programming, while also airing weekly episodes of shows like Columbo and their Sci-Fi Saturday Nights with great "hoot" and "campy" shows like Lost in Space or some other so bad, they are fun to watch.

I find myself laughing out loud at every episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and that is in the Cold War episodes; I can't wait to see those goofy alien, monster, Sci-Fi episodes to come with even more laughs. Those The Time Tunnel travelers always seem to get a new wash and press of clothes and bath right at the start of each new episode "adventure" and they never seem to have to use the bathroom and toilet paper and James Darren doesn't have much opportunity to sing :)--BUT Lee Meriwether is the ONLY reason to endure this bad show.

I have to admit that the less than stellar TV series The Invaders (the aliens have had a hundred opportunities to just kill David Vincent, but they somehow refuse to do so) has become my favorite show on MeTV to spot future stars in supporting guest star roles like Sally Kellerman (who was great in her role), Edward Asner--yes, Lou Grant was an alien--Suzanne Pleshette, and a lot more I can't recall (surprised to see future high-caliber actors guesting on the show) while enjoying a number of well-known, good oldies actors on the show like Ed Begly (father of Ed Begly Jr.) as one example, and Norman Fell's guest appearance was bonus :).

Dish would gladly stock all the channels it could if it were only for MONEY and limited space on the sats. IMHO, IONPlus+ just aint worth the cash, while Antenna TV, Decades, and a few others would definitely be worth the dough and worth taking up limited bandwidth on the sats, IMHO.
 
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Dish carries local affiliates of the Ion networks on a market-by-market basis. In my market (Cleveland, Ohio) Dish does carry both Ion HD (WVPX channel 23) and Ion Plus as an SD-only local channel 17, WDLI. Dish's carriage of Ion Plus in this market is kind of a special case, though. When Ion Plus first launched, it was a subchannel of WVPX, which Dish did not carry since Dish typically does not carry local subchannels. (The obvious exception would be subchannels affiliated with major networks, but there are even some cases where Dish does not carry those, either.) Then, with the OTA repack, WDLI entered into a frequency-sharing agreement with WVPX as the host station. WVPX dropped their Ion Plus subchannel to make room for WDLI, which then picked up the Ion Plus affiliation. This put Ion Plus on a primary channel in our market (even though it is technically still being broadcast like a subchannel, and WVPX still broadcasts the same total number of channels as they had been broadcasting before this change) which is why Dish now carries it. The frequency-sharing arrangement wreaks havoc with the OTA guide data on Dish receivers, though. Since WVPX and WDLI now both have the same TSID (Transport Stream ID) Dish maps the OTA guide data for WVPX (Ion) to both 023-01 and 017-01 in the guide, incorrectly putting Ion's guide data on the OTA Ion Plus channel.
 
I find myself laughing out loud at every episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and that is in the Cold War episodes; I can't wait to see those goofy alien, monster, Sci-Fi episodes to come with even more laughs.

Hey, I loved that show! But the movie was better IMHO. And the movie didn't have that absurd flying sub popping out from under the window section of Seaview.

Speaking of laughable SciFi, I had the misfortune to look at Comet recently while it was showing Battle Beyond the Stars. That is so bad, I again couldn't watch it. But I presume John Boy triumphs in the end. And his ship? Egad, who designed this busty thing?

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Hey, I loved that show! But the movie was better IMHO. And the movie didn't have that absurd flying sub popping out from under the window section of Seaview.

Speaking of laughable SciFi, I had the misfortune to look at Comet recently while it was showing Battle Beyond the Stars. That is so bad, I again couldn't watch it. But I presume John Boy triumphs in the end. And his ship? Egad, who designed this busty thing?

View attachment 148977
Apparently a guy that likes lobsters.
 
Ion Plus is an great TV channel with good movies and seems to be carried by many of the cable carriers. Any idea why Dish doesn’t carry it? It carries Ion but not Ion Plus which is a very different type of channel.
I searched and IMO Ion Plus has rather dull and ordinary content.
 
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