Why wouldn't dish keep VOOM?

[jmhunter83]

I'm not exactly sure if VOOM's subsribers were sold with the satellite. But if they did, I wouldn't see why dish wouldn't embrace them, a second or wider dish may be required, I am sure they have the capability and want the voom receivers to work with dish. Just minor speculation.

I am of course new here, I ordered Voom on 1/21, I am scheduled for 1/28.

thx.

 

[TYORK]

that the thing they only bought the rainbow1 satellite they didn't buy the voom subsribers. OR at least there has been no word on that as of yet

 

[Cris]

The Voom subscribers are of no value to Cablevision when they have no satellite. The value to Dish will be something like $1.5 million per month from subscriptions. It will be overwhelmingly in their best interests to retain 26000 customers from the outset and then gradually merge/hash the Dish and Voom services later.

The lack of announcements must be primarily due to this event being somewhat unexpected at this time, even though there has been a great deal of speculation for months. The actual plan will need more thought and more negotiations.

It seems to me inconceivable that Dish will simply discard 26000 willing paying customers. They are in the business to make a profit and you don't do that by throwing away golden opportunities to attract and keep paying customers.

It seems certain that current Voom subscribers will continue to receive some form of ongoing service although it seems highly likely that the character of that service and scope will change significantly in the coming months.

 

[dnyce]

If I had to guess I would say about 70% of Voomers also have Dish, DirecTV or Cable. They are well aware of this and I'm sure their more concerned with maximizing the content for their million sof viewers then the 10 - 15,000 of us that don't have Dish. Besides they didn't buy Voom, they bought a piece of equipment. What it was used for before they owned it is of no concern to them. I just hope we get at least a 30 day notice before our screens go black.

 

[mdonnelly]

The Voom subscribers are of no value to Cablevision when they have no satellite. The value to Dish will be something like $1.5 million per month from subscriptions. It will be overwhelmingly in their best interests to retain 26000 customers from the outset and then gradually merge/hash the Dish and Voom services later.

The lack of announcements must be primarily due to this event being somewhat unexpected at this time, even though there has been a great deal of speculation for months. The actual plan will need more thought and more negotiations.

It seems to me inconceivable that Dish will simply discard 26000 willing paying customers. They are in the business to make a profit and you don't do that by throwing away golden opportunities to attract and keep paying customers.

It seems certain that current Voom subscribers will continue to receive some form of ongoing service although it seems highly likely that the character of that service and scope will change significantly in the coming months.

It seems to me that Dish didn't acquire the VOOM subscribers along with the equipment, because they didn't want to committ to the VOOM programming. Remember, VOOM was losing millions every quarter, because their costs exceeded their revenue. Charlie won't make that mistake. He might make other mistakes, but not that one.

 

[Lobstah]

I don't think it's certain at all. Nothing about VOOM is certain right now.

Yes...they've been losing money. So what? Delta lost $5B last quarter...that's BILLION. I can still fly them if I choose to.

On the other hand, if there is no funding for VOOM...then it's lights out.

Lob

 

[GadgetRick]

Compared to Dish's millions of subs the few thousand which would stay with Dish is minor. Many Voomers would not care to stick with Dish (I would be one). So figure about half of the subs might stick with Dish. Then what's the cost of retaining the customers? They'll need to offer incentives of some type. They might just take their chances and see if the people on the fence will wind up with Dish with their current promos. If it were me, I would do that. Just send a nice letter informing us of all of the promos (the one with the dvr would be a good start).

The problem isn't really whether Dish will keep us on, rather, what programming can we expect. It doesn't look like we'll see the same Voom exclusive content or the extra channels Voom has been offering. That leaves us with what Dish has been offering. Not enough to keep many of us.

I know we'd like to think we're all important since we're all early adopters but, in reality, our numbers are so small we don't carry much of a voice. I'm not saying it's not worth telling them what we'd like but I don't see them listening to us if it's going to cost them more money than it costs to retain customers now. It just doesn't make good financial sense.

The Rickster

 

[Ncc1701]

Why would Dish want to keep something only 26,000 people wanted?

 

[drod]

One thing you might want to remember is that's not how many people wanted the program, thats how many people dumped there current provider, or in many cases started paying an additional payment for tv. That doesn't include all the people on the outside looking in nor does it include all the people that voom screwed over and forced to go back to other services due to their lack of customer service, billing, and the lovely tax issue I'm sure got a couple people. More people want it then the 26k, thats just all thats left in the way of really dedicated HD subs.

I can see why Cablevision hasn't sold the company or the programming because other than the fact that their is a civil war going on about it, one can see voom is a sick cow. It is slowly dying and bleeding Cablevision of cash. The only thing that I can see to possibly recoup some of the assets is to sell the company piece by piece and hold off to such a point where they can try to negotiate a price with E* and D*. At that point I'm sure Comcast would come into play trying to get the HD prog, but if Echostar buys the company then they have to find a really fast solution to change everyones Voom boxes to the equivalent in a short amount of time, E* would have to pretty much setup a new customer promotion for 26k when there are still some still existing E* customers, and have to make a 'seamless transition.' They would also then have the issue of the payroll and HR for the company itself which E* already has I want to say 9 and rumors for a 10th call center going up, so they are already good there. I have little reason to believe that dish would want to have the world seeing it buying Voom then laying off the entire workforce.

If they purchased it and E* made it available I'm sure that more people would use the HD prog, so buying the programming when it became available which especially if Dolan doesn't purchase the company will be an unevitable contact. The facet of Voom adding additional stations, I'm not sure how well that will make the company survive. It's still having issues advertising to the group of people that will make the difference, it's still having issues with installations, and it's still having issues with the customer service all of which is a huge reason for the monsterous churn rate. All with the promise of huge quarterly losses, we've all seen the filings and can tell it's not exactly pulling in a profit.

My 2 cents, voom truly is ahead of its time but that won't retain customers.

 

[vurbano]

Because the 21 exclusive HD channels only have enough decent content for about 5 compelling channels. I dont think Dish would want channels that they couldnt sell.

 

[DarrellP]

Look on the bright side, if Dish does pick us up and we require any new equipment, it does NOT require a brain-dead installer to show up, Dish will ship you the self install kit.