Dish Network CEO Comments On Subscriber Loss

Dish Network, one of the major cable TV providers in the country suffered a huge loss of customers even after they offered a lower-priced TV package to their subscribers. In a recent conference call, the CEO of Dish Network, Charlie Ergen, discussed about the future growth of Dish’s online streaming platform, Sling TV, and other online services and about how these services adapt to how customers, pay for video.

“If you really need a channel, you can go to a bar or neighbor’s house. My kids will come over to my house if they want to watch something,” Ergen said. “It’s going to be a transition, just as it was from landline to wireless. It hasn’t really accelerated yet.”

Dish Network has struggled to keep their existing subscribers towards their offerings just like all other traditional pay TV providers. Dish admitted that they lost approximately 116,000 net pay TV customers during the third quarter of 2016, but recent reports reveal that Dish has suffered a quarterly loss of about 281,000 subscribers.

Dish Network CEO said that one of the major reasons for the huge loss of subscribers was the three-month blackout, which happened due to the delayed negations with the Tribune Broadcasting. Dish subscribers were unable to access both WGN and FOX network due to this blackout, and that might have forced them to move on to a different provider.

Nonetheless, reports say that almost 13.6 existing Dish Network customers have subscribed to Sling TV, which is the only streaming platform that offers basic package at just $20 a month. The remaining Dish subscribers opted to subscribe for the Flex Plan from the provider, which offers a limited number of channels at an affordable price of $29.99. However, subscribers will have to pay an additional amount of $10 in order to access some local channels.

Sling CEO Roger Lynch said that their online streaming platform has a “good momentum.” Yet again, analyst Craig Moffett commented that Dish Network’s “overall picture continues to be weak” due to the increasing subscriber loss. He also added that Sling TV is the accurate choice to the subscribers, who cancel the online service after the end of the regular season.

Moffett said, “Despite Dish’s commentary to the contrary, we believe that the lifetime economics of a Sling subscriber are significantly less attractive than that of a traditional subscriber.”