I'm not a fan of WFN "HD" at all, but is its presence and the bandwidth it takes as an "HD" channel blocking any of those more worthy channels from being lit up?? I didn't think bandwidth was that tight and I thought the others were more like contractual issues....
Yes there are contractual issues. But there are more HD channels available than DISH has room for at this time. The HD on some of those channels may be limited, but not as limited as the ZERO on WFN.
Most of the available HD channels are channels that are already carried. The contracts on most of them should be no brainers (or they would be if DISH wasn't fighting other battles with half of them.). The premium HD channels are essentially free to all subscribers. Bandwidth IS the primary issue now...DISH must decide how to best use it's bandwidth to increase revenue. Why do you think Cinemax has the most HD's now...it has the fewest subscribers. Adding HD to it might encourage more people to subscribe to it. It costs them nothing but bandwidth.
Adding, say, a Starz channel, costs nothing and might increase Starz subscriptions by 1% or something. Adding channels already carried by DirecTV might decrease churn. Adding WFN
SD could theoretically attract a few new customers. But do you really think anyone is going to upgrade to HD
just for WFN?
It just doesn't make sense from a marketing standpoint. I almost guarantee it was forced on them. Or at a minimum- maybe it was free, and Charlie was looking for anything to cushion the blow to the tier he was about to gut.
Also, it defeats one of DISH's own arguments. "We removed Voom to make room for channels our customers were demanding more."
