Pick Your Channels
This is common: you sign up for a TV deal and the bill skyrockets after the end of the deal; then you call the TV service provider and complain about the bills. Satellite TV and cable customers will know this drill very well. This is the second biggest complaint about Dish Network, the first one being about paying for channels that the users do not watch.
“I think we reached a tipping point,” said Warren Schlichting, Dish’s executive vice president of marketing, programming, and media sales. “The consumer’s appetite has changed for having hundreds of channels. If you take a step back, you will see programmers and distributors (like Dish) have incentive to grow the pay TV industry. And we better find a way to meet consumer demand or people are going to watch Netflix all day.”
Dish Network has introduced a new approach to address both these complaints, after reeling from their largest loss of quarterly subscribers. As per the latest plan, users can get 50 popular channels like CNN, Food Network, and USA Network, for just 29.99 dollars a month. However, it should be noted that local networks would not be available under this plan.
If you wish to watch local networks, sports packs, or kids’ channels, you will need to add them separately. This means that if you are not interested in sports, you do not need to pay for those channels with this ‘skinny pack’.
On Demand Services
In addition, you can add or cancel packs without any additional fees. Dish also offers suggestion about this: “For example, if you want access to additional coverage of the presidential race, you can subscribe to the ‘News’ channel pack and then remove it once the election is over.”
The plan, named Flex Plan, is quite similar to a-la-carte Dish Network packages, and would allow viewers to pay only for those channels that they watch. In fact, with this plan, Dish is planning to redefine the pay TV industry. However, the two-year commitment makes Dish’s Flex plan stand out from its other packages. If the subscriber needs to break the contract before its expiry, he or she will need to pay a termination fee of twenty dollars.
