Dish LIVE Retailer Chat Recap - December 20, 2006

[Scott Greczkowski]

Happy Holiday and welcome to SatelliteGuys.US! Today we will be covering the Dish Network Retailer Chat for December 20th, 2006.

This chat MAY just be one of the most interesting ones of this years, especially if the rumors we have been hearing and reporting on come true. Will we hear about a price increase? Will we hear about some packages getting renamed?

We will find out TODAY!

As always SatelliteGuys will only report items which are of interest to you the consumer, we will not report sensitive dealers only items such as costs, profits, etc.

Because of the expected news, I will be working on grabing screen captures and placing them online in near realtime(a Slingbox is a wonderful thing!), because of this we will not be having our live online chat for this chat only. I do appologize for this but I want to make sure I am seeing the screen instead of just listening.

Again Happy Holidays to everyone, thank you for a great 2006! A big thank you to all our financial supporters for all their help in keeping us online in 2006!!

The chat will begin at 12 NOON Eastern Time.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Jim and Erik welcomes us to the Chat.

Jim jumps in and starts talking about distant networks and says that they got good news from the courst at the end of last week, and that no news is good news.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Jim is still talking about Distant Networks.

They talk about All American Direct and tell how its a seperate company from Dish and the customer gets a bill from All American Direct.

They talk about how some folks may get waivers to get their distants back.

They also talk about RV's and how people with RV's can get their distants back.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

And they then talk about the Free Antenna upgrade for those who have lost distants.

In addition if the customer is getting an antenna has an old x000 series receiver can get a free 301 /311 receiver, the key is they need to receive 3 or more satellites to qualify for this upgrade.

They talk about recent HD Locals launches and then announce that Charlotte, NC will launch in early 2007.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Nex they get into a bunch of important stuff, and they tell us to follow along. They say Dish has good momentium in Q4.

Going into next year all current Dish network promotions are being extended.

They talk about Wildblue for a second and mention their recent successfull satellite launch. The new Wildblue Satellite should be in operation by March.

The $100 Back offer for new and existing customers has been extended though May 31, 2007

Pick your premiums is also back, as of February 1st you can only choose from Showtime and starz (No HBO and No Cinemax)

Now they start by talking about the package names.

They will be making some changes to the programming packages.

AT100 will add 23 new DishCD Channels in February 2007 (The graphic says 32 "new" DishCD channels...)

And now we go on about a price change Effective February 1st. Americas Everything pack is going up $5.

They are dropping the medal names from the HD package, if you want HD its $20 more a month. (Man where have I head this posted before)

 

[trido]

So will we get NAT GEO HD for my 20 a month?


Trido

 

[tsc]

So.. let me get this right. Everything but AEP is going up $3/month and AEP goes up $5/month. HD on top of this is $20/month more. From what I'm seeing from the screenshots, no mention of an exclusion for HD Platinum on the $20/month more. So.. for HD Platinum subscribers, like myself, our rates are actually increasing $10/month?!

Not happy at all... Just subscribed November 1st and the Platinum price I definately liked. I expected a rate increase, would have been fine with the $3/month more, but $10/month more? No way..

 

[psumattDE]

Wow - so for DISH HD Platinum the monthly cost is going up $10 / month? I'm currently paying $99.95 - according to this it will be $89.95 + $20.00!

Holy S!

Man, this just gave me more reason to switch to FIOS TV next month.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Premiums are also going up (See the screen shot) Cinemax is listed in this screen shot.

They talk about bundle discounts of premiums.

They talk about opportunities for customers to avoid the increased pricing and introduce a new package the DishDVR Advantage, it requires 18 month commitment, and credit card auto pay (see graphic) It's a 7% savings for new and existing customer.

Dish is calling 2007 the year of the DVR.

Now they are talking about NASCAR and Dish Network sponsorship of Rouch Racing which has formed a Dish All Star Team. They go into some sensitive marketing information on how they plan to make money off of this partnership.

 

[minnow]

So.. let me get this right. Everything but AEP is going up $3/month and AEP goes up $5/month. HD on top of this is $20/month more. From what I'm seeing from the screenshots, no mention of an exclusion for HD Platinum on the $20/month more. So.. for HD Platinum subscribers, like myself, our rates are actually increasing $10/month?!

Not happy at all... Just subscribed November 1st and the Platinum price I definately liked. I expected a rate increase, would have been fine with the $3/month more, but $10/month more? No way..

From my reading of that slide, Dish Family, AT60 and AT60+ are not seeing any price increase.

 

[minnow]

Now they are talking about NASCAR and Dish Network sponsorship of Rouch Racing which has formed a Dish All Star Team.



I wonder how much of this price increase is going towards the Rouch Racing sponsorship ?

 

[RandallA]

$2.00 more for the Two Premium channels pack plus $2.00 or $3.00 or $5.00 more depending on what package you have. Dang!

 

[shanewalker]

All I'm going to say is--If they're raising my rates $10 a month, they better give me USB archiving FOR FREE!

They better be careful or I may re-activate my Netflix account and start renting HD movies on HD-DVD/Blu-ray versus paying for premium channels...

 

[minnow]

All I'm going to say is--If they're raising my rates $10 a month, they better give me USB archiving FOR FREE!

Yeah, right.

 

[roachxp]

All I'm going to say is--If they're raising my rates $10 a month, they better give me USB archiving FOR FREE!

They better be careful or I may re-activate my Netflix account and start renting HD movies on HD-DVD/Blu-ray versus paying for premium channels...

They way Charlie said he had to train the sales people about the archiving feature, probably 1.99 per month.

 

[andrews777]

They talk about opportunities for customers to avoid the increased pricing and introduce a new package the DishDVR Advantage, it requires 18 month commitment, and credit card auto pay (see graphic) It's a 7% savings for new and existing customer.

The slide is a bit sparse. Does this eliminate the DVR fees? What about additional outlet fees?

What would happen if someone in that committment wanted to upgrade to HDTV?

Brad

 

[Robert NTSC Archivist]

SOunds like those of us who have AEP are really going to pay the price for the loss of DNS.

So are we getting ANYTHING NEW in the AEP package or just a price increase to cover Dishes loss of DNS

 

[skierrob]

so, without the metal packs, how are they going to tell customers that they won't get national geographic HD (and in the future, the regional sports network HD) because they have Top 100 + DishHD instead of Top250 + DishHD.

Or, are they going to give us everything in HD since we are paying $20 for the HD sservice as a separate charge now?

Also, does this mean that we will be able to subscribe to just HD for $20 + $6 non-standard programming fee starting in February? If so, will that include National Geographic HD for the $20?

Robert

 

[whitewolf8214]

You probably should do it anyways because your probably cheaper using Netflix and you don't see the same movie over and over and repeated throughout the month plus you pick the movie you want and want to see at that time.I'm thinking about doing Netflix

 

[KwestJones]

I wonder if they are going to try to add DVR fees the the once "Platinum" package or the AEP with the addition of this DVR package. Only reason I went from gold to platinum was for the waived DVR fees.