DISH -VS- VOOM - A Settlement has been reached!

[costanzas_wallet]

I know for a fact, however, that I chose Dish as my HD provider because of Voom. I saw some DirectTV stuff saying get your favorite channels in HD or see a bunch of stuff you've never heard of. So I looked up Voom and realized it had a lot of programming that interested me.

Exactly the same here.

And I dont care who is right vs. wrong either. I was just playing devils advocate.

 

[Bradp56]

Who knows what will happen, I wish Voom would eventually come back but I guess its not up to me. I am another though who came to Dish because of Voom.

 

[jimboeau]

Anyone doubt that if VOOM would have produced quality material in quantity that Dish would gladly have kept them? And other systems would have signed them?

The point of the spending requirements was to produce material. When the money was spent on other things to excess, it clearly did not meet the intent of the contract. I suspect that is how the courts will continue to see it.

Exactly.... bottom line... VOOM was an overpriced horsesh*t product.

 

[FitzAusTex]

Exactly.... bottom line... VOOM was an overpriced horsesh*t product.

Then all the so called mainstream channels are niche horsesh*t products. To each their own.

 

[kluken]

So by the time this thing really gets settled one of 2 things happens, Voom is out of business and bankrupt or Dish looses and has to recarry Voom, by which time it has more birds up there and can afford to carry the bandwidth, giving it a leg up over DirecTV maybe by then since it shoudl be on parity with DirecTV with Nationals by then. Bwtween this and Tivo lawsuits I really wish DirecTV woudl offer a HD only package and I would switch!

 

[ScottChez]

I predict they will settle out of court. Dish will pay Voom back the money they had already spent in the last year which is not very much.

Charlie gets off easy and Voom is free to try to sell Voom as a Movie channel package to anyone else.

I bet we will see Voom again in one way or an other, who knows maybe Fox or HBO will buy there broadcast rights, we will see it, but it wont be called Voom.

 

[jansan]

The HD world has changed since 2004.

How many HD channels were available in 2004? Around 30 (VOOM had 21 own channels)
How many HD channels are available in 2008? Around 120 (VOOM consists of 15) not including locals.
How many HD channels will be available in 2012? Nearly 200 (No VOOM)

 

[Peter Parker]

Let's see, there were 20,000 HD customers when Charlie added the VOOM channels and 1,200,000 HD customers later - That's a 6000% increase in HD customers. Something attracted the customers and VOOM was essentially the only thing added.

IMHO, it's all about greed.

Mario

justa thought but one thing that eld to the increase is the growth in the number of HD sets out there. No matter how good or bad the available programmign is n one subs when they can't see it in HD.

 

[Peter Parker]

as much as I like Scott and I agree with him most of the time, I have to say that that statement in the front page is not appropiate. I am a staff member and I do not like it as I did not like it that I had to pay all those months and not get the programming I was expecting. I hope he re-considers that statement.

We should let everyone express opinions on the thread but in the front page it looks like a joke instead of something that could demand a response from Echostar to this document. And I would like to read their response as well.

I know that you are taking the statement as being anti VOOM but i don't think that it really is. at this point in a lawsuit it is not uncommon for one or both sides to do waht Scott says VOOM is doing---unloading a torrent of arguments in the hope that they prevail on enough to either prevail or forcea settlement.

as I have said before many of the VOOM fans are taking this asgospel and some who can't stand VOOM are disnissing. Personally I think that there is a lot of spin here and much of what soenm of you takeas facct was seen differebntly at least by the judge who issued the initial ruling. But VOOM did what they had to do and we can only wait and see if it will work.

 

[HDRoberts]

A few thoughts:

A lot of this depends on the interpretation of the word "service". I tend to agree with Dish's position. The service they were paying for was programming. Not Voom's office space or some programing executive. The $100M, to me, is for programming. Why else was the word "service" added?

On the subject of overhead, I also wonder how much general Rainbow Media (IFC, AMC, WE) overhead might have been included in Voom overhead, even if you buy the "including overhead" argument.

Was the $100M for 15 or 21 channels? All Dish ever carried was 15 channels. Had they agreed to carry all 21 before the agreement? Seems to me Voom may be coming up with it's own interpretation.

A lot of you are trying to say Dish's non-repeat HD programming complaint caused Voom to go downhill, and point to increased complaints as evidence. Don't confuse correlation with causation. There were other things that may have caused increased complaints. For one, this was around the peak of Dish Voom subs. There were more people watching, thus, more complaints. Of corese hardly anyone was complaining about it at the beginning because only 20k people were able to get them. Also, this was close to the Direct HD explosion. There was suddenly a lot more HD programming out there. People weren't going to complain when Voom was practically their only HD option. But as it looked like Voom was blocking Sci Fi HD, USA HD, Travel HD, etc, the complaints ramped up. I remember the same endless loop of Thunderbirds and UFO on Family Room before and after Nov. 2007.

Lastly, please stop the "Bring back Voom" threads/replies. This should be plenty of evidence that Voom will be gone regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit. Rainbow just wants cash now.

 

[micknick]

It's interesting how Voom states that dishHD essential is the most widely distributed package since everyone who had dishHd prior to the new packages was converted to dishHD Ultimate unless they downgraded. I don't see the courts giving this win to Voom.
Voom's appeal was dropping rapidly and Dish made the decision that it was in the best interest of subscribers to replace the channels with other programming. It's also amazing how they claim they would see $6 per subscriber. How would that be possible if everyone subscribed to the essential package at $10 per month. Dish wouldn't make hardly any money on that deal.

 

[Hall]

Was the $100M for 15 or 21 channels? All Dish ever carried was 15 channels. Had they agreed to carry all 21 before the agreement? Seems to me Voom may be coming up with it's own interpretation.

They discuss this in the court filings.... The original agreement was for 21 channels @ $100m or $4.76m per channel. When Dish decided to carry 15 channels, VOOM, I think, interpreted that to mean $82m (though 4.76 x 15 doesn't equal 82, it equals 71).

 

[voomlover]

I hope D* picks up voom and puts E* out of business. E* has handled this situation very poorly. Just taking away the channels without notice to their customers is BS. If there new sat had successfully lanuched and they had the bandwidth they needed we would not be talking about any of this. They are trying to make up for lost funds and they knew they signed a bad contract and that was the only way to make up the money. I hope it does cost them a billion dollars!! (not that I believe that will happen) Cant wait to here there response. Chuck vs Charlie should be a good match up!

 

[Bradp56]

I am mad with Dish and Voom on this matter, but I do hope Voom comes back to E* so I dont have to go through the hastle of going to another provider but if they do go to D* I will go there.

 

[SpaethCo]

If there new sat had successfully lanuched and they had the bandwidth they needed we would not be talking about any of this.

They had the Voom channels up at the same time as the batch of new channels they added, so the Voom issue is not entirely about bandwidth.

I do think that if Voom were 7-8 channels instead of 15 and had a significant reduction in the fees per subscriber we would still be seeing Voom today.

 

[riffjim4069]

If someone were to blink, perhaps we may see some VOOM channels return, but I wouldn't hold my breath. It seems to me that VOOM is going to pursue this issue in the courts. Unfortunately, if they start selling the VOOM channels individually to other providers, it will only hurt their case against E*: hard to prove E* breaking the contract sounded the "death bell", like VOOM is claiming, when VOOM is growing the business with others. Also, there may be a section in the agreement that allows E* to renegotiate should VOOM sell the channels a la carte, which may only serve to further limit damages.

I hope I am wrong, but I don't see the current VOOM being around much longer.

 

[Bradp56]

I think most of us would be happy with the Voom channels being around 5-8 channels and having some merged content, the problem is I dont think Voom wants to do that. I wish they would and work out another deal.

 

[mike123abc]

First I think the only reason Dish ever agreed to carry VOOM was to get 61.5 frequencies and the satellite. They paid 200 million up front and agreed to this contract. They were probably watching carefully for any mess up by VOOM.

It was probably CVC that forced VOOM to pay for "executive" overhead for CVC as a way to shift costs out of CVC into VOOM. CVC got greedy and thought they could just get by with the golden contract they had with Dish. Perhaps at first they thought they could get other services to carry VOOM and they would not have to put as much money into VOOM, later they realized they could not sell the programming and worked to minimize the VOOM drag on CVC earnings.

Of course this complaint sounds really bad for Dish and good for VOOM since VOOM lawyers wrote it. Dish lawyers will of course respond back saying it is all false. A judge will rule, eventually it will probably go to trial. CVC gets to drop VOOM all together claiming it is all Dish's fault and save themselves millions and hopefully get a nice settlement out of Dish.

 

[Peter Parker]

They discuss this in the court filings.... The original agreement was for 21 channels @ $100m or $4.76m per channel. When Dish decided to carry 15 channels, VOOM, I think, interpreted that to mean $82m (though 4.76 x 15 doesn't equal 82, it equals 71).

It depends on who you talk to. The earlier ruling discusses an affilaition agreemetn for 15 channels and also questions the validity of including "overhead' in the amount.

But VOOm is caliming that the agreement was for 21 and that indiret expenses aka overhead can and should be counted in the total.

So VOOM lovers will acept the VOOm interpretation. VOOM haters the other.

 

[AdamGott]

I still believe that the bottom line here is that DISH is losing out on a great marketing scheme that they have already botched - when they hit '90' HD channels they should have trumpeted that and the fact that they have 15 EXCLUSIVE HD channels that Direct TV does not and can not have. It really doesn't matter what the present subscribers think about Voom's programming, new subs looking for HD would have lapped it up (as I did). Name me another package of 15 ALL HD CHANNELS with NO COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTIONS that is NOT AVAILABLE ANYWHERE ELSE (or at least any other satellite service). New subs looking for an HD satellite provider would certainly factor this in to their decision.

Oh well, it seems that they would rather be involved in lawsuits....