Direct TV has announced a round of job cuts and some kind of halt on certain capital investments. The question should be is any company going to survive. Dish (and Direct TV) will survive just fine. Dish is getting rid of some low-end subs who never should have been qualified for the freebies. Now, Charlie seems to be taking the same route as Direct TV and focusing on the "quality" of the subscriber.
Any concerns about Dish or Echostar going out of business indicate the ignorance of the masses when it comes to how or why a company will survive. Dish is one of the few companies that has a fair amount of cash (quite liquid) available and has conservative financial practices. So, in other words, every time Charlie drops a channel rather than pay what ever they want, or refuses to go grow debt to pay for NFL Sunday Ticket or MLB Extra Innings, he is protecting his company from going out of business when tough times come. Some of the behaviors that some on this board deplore--dropping channels, not offering the "too expensive" services like YES or many other exclusives--is exactly what is keeping Dish in business and in business for a long time. Not the piddly loss of some subs (cable has been losing subs for years and they are nowhere near going out of business) nor the little problems Dish now has that were some of the same problems Direct TV had for years while Dish outpaced them in several areas for years, and Direct TV did well enough.
Now, it is Dish's turn to have some choppy waters that Charlie said they will just have to tread, and he is right. But they will get to dry ground yet. The real reason Dish has had problems for the last several quarters is that Ergan was not involved in the day-to-day operations at Dish as he was busy creating the new Dish company from Echostar. Now, he is back and absolutely running the day-to-day matters. He hasn't been back long enough for the changes to measured just yet, but I do see 2009 Q2 report being an extremely good one.
