Who Ownes Who?

BillH

SatelliteGuys Guru
Original poster
Sep 16, 2003
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A fellow at the local coffee shop the other day said that Dish had bought out Direct TV. I just did not believe him.

Can you tell me if this is correct or not, and who is he talking about.

Thanks.
 
nope, sorry. A few years ago they had talked about a merger, but it never happened.

Dish is however owned by Echostar, the company that ownes the satellites that all Dish programming is broadcast from.
 
God forbid D* receivers! I like my VIP622!! I also have seen HD onn D* and thank you E*!
 
Dish, after buying DirectTV, was planning to replace all their receivers and combine all the satellite's bandwidth. They said they would have enough bandwidth to go full resolution on SD and HD, add every possible channel, put locals in all 210 DMAs and have broadband internet for all.

However, being a satellite monopoly, they would lose much of the incentive to do these things and service, pricing, and receiver quality would probably have gone downhill.
 
rglore said:
However, being a satellite monopoly, they would lose much of the incentive to do these things and service, pricing, and receiver quality would probably have gone downhill.

Monopoly at this time yes, maybe if Vooms CEO hadnt bailed when they did then no. But there is one thing I do know about Charlie and thats that he wouldnt have slowed down on incentives to create new equipment, nor would he give in to increasing the price dramaticly, receiver quality would remain the same to. Remember that cable is still the holder of the market share so even if it had went down to one dbs provider ( wich it wouldnt have as one of the provisions that had been set forth for the buyout was to help a small startup cable co in new york get into dbs ) there is still the biggest competitor for dbs and thats cable.
 
garys said:
Actually E* did try to buy D*, sale was never finalized and merger was called off.

To be more accurate, the FCC said 'no way Jose' and blocked, or rejected the possibility of a merger.
 
Don't forget that if they had merged, then they would have been able to consolidate all of those channels which are duplicated between both providers. In other words, they would have gained nearly the entire bandwidth of either provider. Plus that would have been 32 full transponders at 101, 110, and 119. They'd have more capacity then there are channels. Things would really have looked good.

But having two players is still a plus.
 
The FCC never had a chance to say No Way. The Justice department beat them to it. :) Had Echostar (the owner of Dish) bought Hughes (the owner of DirecTV, Vivendi/Universal would have had a big stake in Dish. The name "DirecTV" would have lived on and the name Dish Network" would have died.

There were about 10 mergers and "buy-ins" that didn't happen when the justsice department said that they would fight the merger if the FCC approved it. Charlie Ergen CEO of Echostar, pulled the plug when it was apparant that his "the competition is cable, FiOS, and other MSO delivery and not other satellites companies" wasn't working. (even though it is the truth! How some of these other mergers can happen but not that one still makes no sense to me).

See ya
Tony
 
TNGTony said:
The FCC never had a chance to say No Way. The Justice department beat them to it. :) Had Echostar (the owner of Dish) bought Hughes (the owner of DirecTV, Vivendi/Universal would have had a big stake in Dish. The name "DirecTV" would have lived on and the name Dish Network" would have died.

There were about 10 mergers and "buy-ins" that didn't happen when the justsice department said that they would fight the merger if the FCC approved it. Charlie Ergen CEO of Echostar, pulled the plug when it was apparant that his "the competition is cable, FiOS, and other MSO delivery and not other satellites companies" wasn't working. (even though it is the truth! How some of these other mergers can happen but not that one still makes no sense to me).

See ya
Tony


I know what you mean. The AOL Time Warner Merger should never have happened.


If the Dish DTV merger would have happened it would have been sweet to PQ and True HD....NOT HDLITE.

96 TPs all coming in on 1 Dish.
 

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