Dish Network Earnings Call

[Scott Greczkowski]

Dish Network is holding its quarterly earnings call.

I am on the line trying to listen in, however things at the office are nuts today so I might miss some things.

I am hoping other staff members can call in and recap interesting bits as well.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok here we go, reading the rules and SEC stuff now.

Charlie is there.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They immediately go to Q&A

 

[thewadman]

Awesome, thanks Scott!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie says DirecTV is operating better then DirecTV.

He says Customer Service has slipped and he is going around working on it as of February 1st.

Charlie says that yesterday they launched 22 channels and that is competitive.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie says some of the churn is because of Pirarcy (huh?) and says this summer they will patch holes in their system.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Carl Vogell says the 700MHZ spectrum is for mobile use. He says Echostar could make portable media players for Dish. he says they are a long long long way from doing anything with the 700mhz spectrum.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They keep mentioing the addition of 22 new HD channels but no mention of the removal of 10 HD channels.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie says that the two satellite launches are still going to happen this year and they will make the 100 LIL cities.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Question about the VOOM channels.

Charlie says the rest of the VOOM channels will be going away soon. He says there is no demand for the VOOM channels.

 

[dfergie]

Q
Voom channels what does this mean in lt carriage of these channels,
A:
Charlie the Voom channels we are going to take the Voom channels down have already took down 2/3 rdaand will take down the rest when we can; We can replace those channels with other channels of comperative value.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie is continuing to dog VOOM. He says people rather have channels like SCIFI USA DISNEY and so on...

 

[Sean Mota]

sure give us more 5 max with all the hd content... what an ignorant remark. no demand for monsters hd.

 

[dfergie]

Charlie: 15 voom channels were not as popular as scifi etc...It didnt make sense for us to focus on that business.

 

[navychop]

Question about the VOOM channels.

Charlie says the rest of the VOOM channels will be going away soon. He says there is no demand for the VOOM channels.

He must be tasting crow on that one, after touting Voom in the past.

So he doesn't think they're worth much, and will replace them with channels of "comparable value?" Meaning channels of little worth?

 

[cforrest]

Wonder if he is going to address the halt of construction on Echostar 13 satellite (CMBStar)?

 

[Sean Mota]

he is playing cowboy business... he is the cowboy and makes his own rules at long the way...

 

[dfergie]

Q:
It is fair to say retention spending is down?
A:
I don't think it is down, we need to look at the churn numbers.
we have lost customers because of HD , we need to upgrade the mpeg2 users to mpeg4 as alot of those customers didn't know they could get new channels.

 

[dfergie]

We are well under what our competitor has spent.
Q:
Are there any plans to swap out STB's?
A: The majority of our base has 8psk... we have been suppling mpeg 4 boxes exclusivlly for about 2 years we are getting there.

 

[Peter Parker]

Actually I wonder what the actal audience of the VOOM chanels was. i suspect quire small but i do not know.