I am sure that they are thinking that a merger of DISH & DIRECTV would be similar to the merger between Sirius & Xm satellite radio. Satellite is definitely not going to continue to grow in the future. So a merger would make sense if the competition for satellite is going to keep growing. Like Internet delivered companies like Hulu and Netflix, Amazon, etc. Charlie already tried this last decade and it was scuttled by the government on the potential for anti trust monopoly charges if there was no other competition in satellite . This time I think that letting the two merge would actually forestall the declining sub numbers. Because the merged company could give you all channels in HD for national , premium and sports channels. Possibly, and that is a big POSSIBLY, this might lead to lower charges for programming because the combined company would have like 35 million subscribers and that would translate into bargaining power against companies like Viacom and DISNEY ,not to mention the locals: network channels.