Just to point one thing out. In 2013, dish averaged $4.74/sub/month. That's after all expenses. That is net gain. Assuming every customer is worth the same value, Dish is LOSING a net gain of just over $5M(this is based on that dumbassery statement by Tim Carry from Fox). Considering they made a net gain last year of around $806M, and adding on additional services and customers, even with the high cost acquisition rate, Dish is still coming out profitable. And if you want to claim stock holders are going to base their decisions on customer subscriptions, then more subs with contracts(and even no contracts on Sling TV), means more happy stock holders. This is not the case, but based on what you said, these are the holes you need to fill before spouting off about this. Look at the entire financial report, not just one or two numbers. You might be shocked that the folks who get paid to analyze them and make company wide decisions... Might actually know what they are doing.