Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network off Dish due to contract dispute

[digitaldogger]

I Can Honestly Say I Am A Female And Like Channels Like Tlc, Lifetime, Hallmark, But One Thing I Really Like It That Dishnetwork Won't Cave Into Most Of The Price Demands Out There. We Need To Look At It That Way Because Our Price For The Top 60 Could Be 50.00 Instead Of 31.99 (i Understand That Its Going Up To, But Less Than 5 Percent Increase) They Did Put We In Place Of Lifetime, And Encore Love In Place Of Lifetime Movie Network And Added Fine Living To One Of Their Packages, So They Are Not Leaving Us High And Dry, They Are Trying To Get Lifetime To Come Down From 70 Percent Increase, If They Would Give Into Those Two Channels Think Of What Disney, Viacom Entertainment Would Do For Their Channels, You Want Someone Like Dishnetwork On Your Side, Not Just Spiking Your Bill Up Everytime Time A Core Of Channels Wants More Money... Look At It That Way, Because If You Look Back Directv Has Raised Their Rates Every Year For The Past 3 Years At Least, Dish Is Every Two For The Most Part. Standing Back And Looking At It That Way Can Give Some Perspective!! And I Do Miss Lifetime, But Not Enought To Pay A Lot More Money For It!!

 

[cablewithaview]

I Can Honestly Say I Am A Female And Like Channels Like Tlc, Lifetime, Hallmark, But One Thing I Really Like It That Dishnetwork Won't Cave Into Most Of The Price Demands Out There. We Need To Look At It That Way Because Our Price For The Top 60 Could Be 50.00 Instead Of 31.99 (i Understand That Its Going Up To, But Less Than 5 Percent Increase) They Did Put We In Place Of Lifetime, And Encore Love In Place Of Lifetime Movie Network And Added Fine Living To One Of Their Packages, So They Are Not Leaving Us High And Dry, They Are Trying To Get Lifetime To Come Down From 70 Percent Increase, If They Would Give Into Those Two Channels Think Of What Disney, Viacom Entertainment Would Do For Their Channels, You Want Someone Like Dishnetwork On Your Side, Not Just Spiking Your Bill Up Everytime Time A Core Of Channels Wants More Money... Look At It That Way, Because If You Look Back Directv Has Raised Their Rates Every Year For The Past 3 Years At Least, Dish Is Every Two For The Most Part. Standing Back And Looking At It That Way Can Give Some Perspective!! And I Do Miss Lifetime, But Not Enought To Pay A Lot More Money For It!!

Well the thing about NOT caving into price increases is, every provider would need to be involved to do any good. That would be hard to do since everyone can't quit fighting each other for subs. Dish I guess thinks they rule the roost. Also remember that $31.99 will be $34.99 02/01/06. Apparently you haven't seen Nick and Disney prices. These are prices charged to providers per sub: Disney is at .91, Nick is .554 , Encore Love is .3195, Oxygen is .225, WE .18, Fine Living is .12. (Disney will be going up roughly 5% and Toon was at .11 w/ Disney but it sounds like they will be going roughly the same 5%. They are redoing contracts now and cost per sub will be rising also) It sounds like with the $3 increase and subing a couple of channels with cheaper programming sound like there still sticking it to customers. All channels roughly have a 5% increase YEARLY. We demand to much and bring it on ourselves. .04 per sub on Lifetime was all, that's LESS than some of the channels Echostar renewed with.
Education is power and the rest are sheeps. Don't let Charlie BS you.

 

[twinrocks]

I don't believe I am switching back!!

After finally getting Direct TV (and thankfully still having Dish), I am having to switch back to Dish because of the other two members of my household!! So am watching all the Lifetime movies I can today!!! The problem is not the programming, not the great signal, but the STUPID REMOTE and GUIDE!!!! The remote is too small of buttons and numbers for her to see, my husband hates the remote, they both hate the way the guide is on Direct TV, and etc, etc!!! I do realise that the guide sucks, and the remote is hard to see everything. I tried to program a different remote for my elderly Mom, but it didn't work. How she operated the DIsh remote was while she on a channel and she wanted to see what came on next on that same channel, she could hit the right arrow and it would come up. I called DTV, and they were very nice about it, but admitted they do not have that function. SO, because I can't take the griping and whining about this situation, we are going back to Dish, and living without the Lifetime stuff.

Now, my problem is getting the Dish antenna back up in place of the DTV antenna, and hopefully getting the signal!!! We kept all the wiring the same, and the receivers won't be a problem at all, but I dread trying to direct that antenna properly. Am doing it tomorrow. Thankfully we had a 7 day grace period with DTV.

Can you believe this??? Errrrrrr, I almost left home this morning

 

[samatha6]

After finally getting Direct TV (and thankfully still having Dish), I am having to switch back to Dish because of the other two members of my household!! So am watching all the Lifetime movies I can today!!! The problem is not the programming, not the great signal, but the STUPID REMOTE and GUIDE!!!!

I think you and I were talking on the lifetime forums.. If you recall... I had some posts saying that DTV software was crap.. and their cheap IR remotes were even crappier.. compared to Dishes slick UHF radio controlled ones. I had DTV.. had comcast... and dish in the last couple of years.. By far Dish is better PQ, and their receivers are much better build quality and their remotes are the best in the business.. Period.. But I guess you had to find that out for yourself.. I don't think too many will jump to DTV like lifetime hopes.. More like lifetimes advertisers are going to start wanting deep discounts.. and they will also have to forget about 12 million carriage fees while they are at it. But that is how Disney owned lifetime is.. look how greedy they are with ESPN as well.. But it looks like they may add lifetime back on.. they are negotiating for that.. but I read that LMN is off the table.. dish is not interested in that anymore and oxygen has taken those funds away from that.. So lifetime has blown their chance to add all there channels for a very very long time I am afraid..

 

[Ilya]

DirecTV-related posts moved to a separate thread: DTV Installed today...

 

[CPanther95]

and their {Dish} receivers are much better build quality

I don't think I've ever seen someone say that.

 

[ScottChez]

Is it true we are only talking about a 76 Cent price increase?

Is there any way Dish could just offer up a new MOVIE channel like package and for 76 Cents we could get the 3 Lifetime channels, Lifetime, lifetime movies and lifetime real w?

How about an HD Lifetime channel and make it a $1 more each month?

That way I can make my Wife happen and I wont have to go back to cable.

I would be glad to pay the 76 cents.

Just an Idea, Dish, are you reading this thread?

 

[samatha6]

I don't think I've ever seen someone say that.

Well in my case.. its true. The DTV receivers I had were very cheap RCA IRD's.. the sides on those were not even finished.. bare metal. The remotes were junk.. and both of them would not even hold the codes for more then a week. The comcast SA boxes I had were terrible.. ugly, bulky and the remotes had a ton of features that were not enabled....

Right now I have a dual tuner dish 322 with UHF radio controlled remotes.. this receiver is very nice looking and the distant TV running off this tuner has excellent PQ as well. I even have an additional dish picking up some channels in India and they work seemlessly with both sets on this 322. The 811HD ird I have also looks much nicer then the crummy SA3050HD box I had from comcrap. Again this ird has radio controlled compared to CC bad IR with tons of functions that don't work on the remote.. If you looked at the my Dish IRD's next to the RCA/CC ones.. you would also agree.. Not sure about other dish ird's but the 322 and 811 ones are very nice. I am sure that DTV's Tivo boxes or maybe CC moto boxes would be a closer match to what I have now. But in my area, only the SA ones are available with CC.. And I am sure that DTV is using something better then the RCA ones I had.. believe me, you could not get much worse then those DTV RCA 435 ones i had.

 

[samatha6]

Is it true we are only talking about a 76 Cent price increase?
Is there any way Dish could just offer up a new MOVIE channel like package and for 76 Cents we could get the 3 Lifetime channels, Lifetime, lifetime movies and lifetime real w?
How about an HD Lifetime channel and make it a $1 more each month?
That way I can make my Wife happen and I wont have to go back to cable.
I would be glad to pay the 76 cents.
Just an Idea, Dish, are you reading this thread?

Dish would probably go for that but Lifetime never would.. You see Lifetimes market share is not that big.. If you made it a premium they would get a whole lot less money then they would with bundling.. With bundling, they can extort money from all the top 120 subs.. whether they watch it or not. ESPN is what is making me mad. That channel costs plenty to every sub.. including the basic top 60 ones.. ESPN/Disney is way out of hand with ESPN.. I like that to go a la carte as well.. Sick of these content providers hiding their true costs behind bundles.. but it makes them much more then making it a premium.. You need to address lifetime on that question.. they are the ones against a la carte... I don't think any content provider wants that.. Bundling is good for them. Bad for us.

And as far as those saying a la carte would cost more.... blaaaaa. There are strong arguments in favor of it since it would put pressure on content providers to lower carriage fees to attract subs. It would also put pressure on them to improve the content itself. Right now there is not that much motivation for them to improve content if they are buried in a bundle getting carriage fees from all.

 

[CPanther95]

D*'s hardware has always been one of the major advantages IMO - but that may all change with the new boxes.

 

[samatha6]

D*'s hardware has always been one of the major advantages IMO - but that may all change with the new boxes.

I think so.. the 322 is a sweet box. And DTV does not even offer the option to run two TV's on one dual tuner box. You MUST have two boxes for two TV's.. Which cost another 6 bucks a month for the second box. Soon dish will offer the vip622 which will be able to do HD on the primary TV and send SD to another set... with radio controlled remotes as well.. This is cutting edge technology. I believe they report it will do 25 hours recording on HD and 180 hours for SD recording...
With DTV boxes you have the ablility to record one channel and watch another... but only on that TV.. with the vip622 you will be able to record from both tv's to the 622. To me it sounds like Dish is coming out with better technology and I forgot to mention that the 622 does mpeg4 as well.. As far as I know DTV has not come out with mpeg4 yet. I would say Dishes boxes are a step ahead of the technology curve.

 

[twinrocks]

I think you and I were talking on the lifetime forums.. If you recall... I had some posts saying that DTV software was crap.. and their cheap IR remotes were even crappier.. ..

Hi! Yes, I think we were! Well, we held our breath this morning and hooked up the Dish again. I was so afraid we would wind up with NO TV!! BUT, I reconnected all three receivers, then we tackled the antenna. It was actually a snap, and we actually got BETTER reception!! I was inside watching the signal strength, hubby outside with the antenna, and I have to admit WE got a better signal than either the Dish or DTV installers!! That was nice. I will really miss Lifetime, actually LMN, but the other two are happy. The DTV remote is awful and so is DTV's channel guide. They have made it way too complicated and the buttons and lettering way too small. I did program a custom favorites, but if your power goes out, or you unplug for any reason it loses it. Whereas our Dish settings stayed the same and all our favorite guides stayed the same after being off for 4 days. So, our PQ was from installers, not anything else.

 

[TNGTony]

Is it true we are only talking about a 76 Cent price increase?

No. We're talking about a 76 PERCENT (76%) increase. In reality probably LESS than 76¢.

But let's put it this way, if EVERYTHING went up by 76%, would you still be okay with that? AT60 would go from 26.99 to $47.50 instead of the announce $29.99 *done to cover other channels price increases. Is that okay now?

Is there any way Dish could just offer up a new MOVIE channel like package and for 76 Cents we could get the 3 Lifetime channels, Lifetime, lifetime movies and lifetime real w?
How about an HD Lifetime channel and make it a $1 more each month?
That way I can make my Wife happen and I wont have to go back to cable.
I would be glad to pay the 76 cents.
Just an Idea, Dish, are you reading this thread?

If they were, they probably stopped reading by the 5th time this was suggested. As has been explained several times in this thread, the channel owners do not want to be sold separately. The channel owners want to be included in the most basic packages available. Not only that, but many insist "if you want this channel, you have to get that channel too for X amount, otherwise you get nothing". This is what Heast did with Lifetime and LMN to try to force Dish to get LIfetime RW. This is likely where most of the 76% figure comes from.

Dish took a pass. Lifetime said, take it or leave it. Dish said "leave it". At that point Dish could not legally cary the channel and had to pull it.

See ya
Tony

 

[Mark_AR]

Here is a reply I got from Dish.

I filled out the lifetime website *canned outrage letter* and put my *loyal supporter letter* to drop the channels letter in its place. (See bottom of post)

It clearly explains Lifetime had the hissy and told E* to pull the plug on Dec. 31 if they weren't going to pony up to the rate increase.

Dear Customer,
Thank you for being a valued DISH Network customer. DISH Network sincerely regrets that your programming is currently unavailable. Lifetime has imposed unfair rates for their satellite customers which we feel are unreasonable. Until the dispute with Lifetime is resolved, Women’s Entertainment (channel 128) and Encore Love (channel 109) is being offered in all of our basic programming packages. The loss of the Lifetime Channels was the result of Lifetime Networks decision to impose a more then 70% rate increase for DISH Network to continue to carry these channels, therefore DISH Network at this time is not offering credits for the loss of the Lifetime Channels.

DISH Network has launched the Oxygen channel on channel 127 to all customers for a 30 day free preview. This will also be available permanently in our AT120 and above packages as well as our DishLATINO Dos package and above.

Oxygen, the only cable network owned and operated by women is the 24-hour television network on a mission to bring women (and the men who love them) the edgiest, most innovative entertainment on television. The Oxygen network has the MOST original programming of all the women's networks including Mo¿Nique¿s Fat Chance and Oprah After the Show.

We continually strive to control costs on behalf of our customers and are hopeful that this dispute will be resolved quickly. Please understand we are not at liberty to discuss negotiation details. Your business is greatly appreciated and we thank you for allowing us to be of assistance to you.

We have included in the email an open letter that was sent to Lifetime Networks.
Sincerely,
Terry B.
DISH Network
e-Care

January 4th

Louise Henry Bryson
President, Distribution and Affiliate Business
Development Lifetime Networks
2049 Century Park East, Suite 840
Los Angeles, CA 90067

Dear Ms. Bryson:

We hope you share our goal of restoring Lifetime programming expeditiously and at a fair rate. However, inaccurate statements in your press release and on your Web site are counterproductive. Let’s clear the air. I invite you or your representative to appear with me live on the Charlie Chat in our studio in Denver on Jan. 9, 2006 at 7 p.m. Some of the issues we will raise are listed below. We will give you equal time to present Lifetime’s perspective, and DISH Network’s customers can reach their own conclusions.

1. Let’s Do the Math. During months of negotiation, and prior to our loss of Lifetime Movie Network, your final offer was a 76.47 percent rate increase for Lifetime. You dispute this, describing the rate increase proposed by Lifetime as “modest” and far less than 76 percent. The math is simple. If our calculation is inaccurate, please explain. We offer the following example of how we did the math, for illustrative purposes.

If our 2005 rate was $1.00 per month per subscriber, and if Lifetime proposed a rate increase to $1.76, we would divide the 2005 $1.00 rate into the $.76 increase. The result is a 76 percent rate increase.

We reiterate our willingness to make our actual 2005 Lifetime rate, and the actual rate proposed by Lifetime, available to the public. Join me on the air so they can do the math as well.

2. Customer Care. The Lifetime Web site states: “DISH unilaterally chose to pull your favorite networks off the air.” Further, your Web site states: “Lifetime offered a contract extension to continue negotiations, but instead DISH decided to pull the plug on millions of women viewers on New Year’s Eve.”

These statements contradict your correspondence to us. Lifetime never offered an extension prior to our loss of the Lifetime Movie Network. In fact, on at least two occasions you indicated that you would not be willing to grant any extension whatsoever. For example, in a letter to us dated Oct. 18, 2005, Lifetime stated:

“…it is not LES’ intention to extend the existing Term Sheet beyond its expiration date and, in the event a renewal agreement has not been reached, EchoStar is not authorized to distribute Lifetime and/or LMN after December 31, 2005.”

In a follow up letter to us dated Dec. 2, 2005, Lifetime stated:
“…it is not our intention to extend the existing Term Sheet beyond its expiration date and, in the event a renewal agreement has not been reached, this letter shall serve as notice that EchoStar is not authorized to distribute Lifetime and/or LMN after December 31, 2005.”

Those were clear statements. You consistently maintained that ultimatum. Your actions were clear. If you have any correspondence that evidences any request by Lifetime for an extension prior to our loss of the Lifetime Movie Network (at 12:06 p.m., on Dec. 31) we are unaware of such. I again invite you to appear on the Charlie Chat and share any correspondence with our subscribers. The final rate you offered prior to the loss of Lifetime Movie Network on Dec. 31, 2005, was a 76 percent rate increase. DISH Network offered two alternative proposals to keep the programming on the air. Lifetime rejected both offers.

Again, we reiterate our willingness to make the entire text of each letter, and the entirety of your proposed agreement, available to the public so it can decide. Join me on Jan. 9, explain your perspective, and let consumers reach independent conclusions.

3. Playing Politics. Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network offer programming valued by men and women alike. Your attempts to spin the absence of the channels as DISH Network discrimination against women is both a disservice to your loyal viewers and an obvious attempt to obscure the real issue – cost of service. For the benefit of all Lifetime viewers, we want to restore the channels as soon as possible. In the meantime, join me on Jan. 9. If our viewers are missing public service or other important information please provide it, and we will broadcast that material to our customers at our expense.

4. Fair Dealing. Lifetime claims that DISH Network has a “history of just pulling the plug in the middle of negotiations.” Lifetime’s words and actions explain who really pulled the plug and why. The fact is, virtually every pay TV provider has at some point been forced to take down channels. Throughout 2005, DISH Network successfully negotiated new contracts for 319 channels. Only three channels went off the air. Two were the Lifetime channels.

We have valued our relationship with Lifetime Television over the past 10 years and we are hopeful that we can work together to restore Lifetime Television’s programming to DISH Network customers. Join me on Jan. 9 and let’s clear the air.



Sincerely,

Charlie Ergen
Chief Executive Officer
DISH Network
http://www.fairsatellite.com/index4.shtml





Your message:



Dear Mr. Ergen:

I am grateful about your decision to pull Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network off the air.

I will continue to be a loyal Dish customer and support your decision to bring better satellite TV to all without having outrageous contract requests threatening my monthly bill.

I also enjoy the programming recently added. I watch it more in the last 3 weeks than I have ever watched Lifetime and LMN combined.

Thank you again for looking out for my best interest.

Sincerely,

M B, AR
Loyal Lifetime Viewer

 

[twinrocks]

Yep, canned letter reply!

Yeah, I think anyone who has contacted either Dish or Lifetime has reveived all the canned letters! As fas as oxygen channel, I think it is horrid! Horrid programming with content that I do not want crammed down my throat!! I guess I am zooming in on that "generation gap" thing. I don't want gory stories, drug stories, serial killer stories, and things like that. TV should be entertaining not a nightmare! But they must know what they are doing if that's what the majority of viewers are watching. Thing is, NO one I know wants to watch that stuff either!

So, I am a huge computer person and am spending much more time on my computer these days!