Posted on 12/29/2014 4:01:31 PM PST by xzins
Furious Dish Network, Inc., customers are dropping the service, demanding refunds and besieging Dish with angry calls and emails after Fox News was dropped over a contract dispute.
On Dec. 21, fans of the immensely popular Fox News, among the 14 million Dish subscribers, awoke to find out that their favorite network had been blacked out, Mediaite reports.
To date, 178,000 complaint calls were made through a toll-free line Fox set up, and 140,000 emails have deluged Dish, but the dispute remains ongoing, Variety reports.
The squabble involves "carriage fees" paid by providers to networks for programming. Dish claims that Fox attempted to obtain a new, higher-priced contract for an "unrelated" channel, likely FXX or Fox Sports 1, as part of the new overall Fox contract, and Dish bucked the effort, dropping Fox instead as a negotiating ploy, Mediaite reports.
Fox News, in a statement reported in Variety, said: “Since Dish dropped Fox News, Dish has focused on shifting blame instead of getting Fox News back on the air. But the facts speak for themselves – Dish has blocked more than 10 channels in the last six months alone. We continue to work on resolving this situation, but until Dish is responsive, we are unable to update you on when Fox News will be available.”
However, in a video released by Dish, chairman Charles Ergen, making a play on Fox's "Fair and Balanced" slogan, stated: "There was nothing about this extortion attempt that was fair or balanced. Rather, it was greedy, arrogant and disrespectful to you, their loyal viewer.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Dish claims Fox wants a 150% increase, yet, we don’t know the numbers or the deal. I mean, maybe Fox gave Dish a nice rate before with an increase to be had and now Dish wants to renege on that increase.
Charlie Ergen, owner of Dish, is a known cheapskate and is worth $15 billion. If Dish customers are paying high rates for anything it is his salary.
Oh, there’s lot more than 140,000 nasty e-mails to Dish.
Their in-box has responded “Full” every time I’ve tried to use it.
Yes, Dhue is only w The Blaze now.
So, how many messy-can channels do they need? Home shopping, Al Jezzera muzzie network, infomercial channels....I have 90 million channels and maybe 10 are worth watching.
I am surprised you found 10!
Nice graphic... tells the whole story!
The Yankees wanted Cablevision to pay them $30M per year to broadcast the YES Network.
Cablevision came back and said they could do that, but it would cost their 1 million cable subscribers in the NYC region about $30 per year (or $2.50 per month) in higher cable charges. They agreed to do it, but only if the YES Network was sold as a premium channel to those subscribers who were willing to pay extra for it. They figured that maybe 200,000 of their subscribers would sign up for YES as a premium channel ... and since the $30M would be covered by 200,000 viewers instead of 1 million, the average subscriber who was a Yankee fan would be paying $150 more per year ($12.50 per month) for the deal. The Yankees wouldn't accept that deal because they didn't want to be listed as a premium channel on Cablevision. They were adamant about getting YES on Cablevision as part of a basic package.
Cablevision said they'd rather ditch the YES Network entirely rather than pay the $30M and raise their cable rates for all of their customers by $2.50 per month. They apparently did the math and estimated the number of their 800,000 subscribers who were not Yankee fans and who would drop their cable service rather than pay the extra $2.50 every month.
That dispute lasted quite a while, and I think it goes to the heart of the issue over cable packages and subscriber fees for basic channels vs. premium channels.
Have attic antenna to get a few locals(in HD)/others + Roku 2, WD Live+, HTPC, etc. for other content.
Paying more for more commercials & progressive indoctrination "programming" didn't make sense. Live in Michigan, so there are no sports worth watching(heh), pretty much everything else is garbage.
Family member misses Fox News, not me...Fox & Friends(e-GOP & cackling cupcakes)+ Red Eye stinks since the format change, not to mention O'Reilly's a pompous-ass bore who just mails in in every night to sell his books....blah.
Gold Rush & Fast 'n Loud were the only 2 programs I watched....& Fast 'n Loud jumped-the-shark last season with their hollywood junk.
Only part that sucks about the whole ordeal is cable(well ISP)provider now charging $60 a month for internet(only), not much I can do about that with little-to-no competition around these parts.
...they're gonna get'ya one way or another.
Will Fox end up buying Dish? That would be hilarious!
I loved direct tv but cancelled when i had to get a new box. They said i had to create a new favorites list to block the pay per view channels. I said cancel the sub and i spent the hour or two it would take to do that doing something constructive. only occasionally miss it. watching a netflix movie now. will start my pepper plants later tonight and i get a most of my news here. only occasional yelling.
I loved direct tv but cancelled when i had to get a new box. They said i had to create a new favorites list to block the pay per view channels. I said cancel the sub and i spent the hour or two it would take to do that doing something constructive. only occasionally miss it. watching a netflix movie now. will start my pepper plants later tonight and i get a most of my news here. only occasional yelling.
Glad to hear about NewsMax. I just switched from Direct to Dish the week before the Fox News shutdown. Had already decided that the TV News was less than what was on the internet, made the switch and am saving $60 per month and then $40 after a year. For the most part all of my Christian programming is intact except for TCT. I have put in my request for them to carry it. Actually I haven’t even turned on the TV for quite a few days. . .don’t miss it.
Thanks for letting me know your experience. May check into some you’ve mentioned.
I don’t miss FOX at all. Nothing but the GOP-e Karl Rove channel. I’ve had frikkin’ enough.
Got a letter from Dish today, saying they are raising our rates again. It’s only been a year since they did that.
Newsmax, everyone for their news shows, they have had left wing guests on, someone from move on and then, another time per a libertarian view, they had Ron Paul on. They have these people come on using skype.
Fox going off must be a bonanza for them. What is their conservative broadcasting is when Steve Malzberg is on.
Still, Newsmax must only have about 8 hours a day including repeats of their news, the rest is their documentaries. But overall they do a good job.
Too, I like the fact, that they don’t have a bunch of newscasters who you know are making 7 figure salaries.
All of that said, I weaned myself off of Fox but I think Judge Jeannine just for me, is one of the best shows on TV, she tells it like it is. Saturday nights.
Dish is THE worst about this kind of BS: they do this ALL the time. It’s why I switched to DirecTV a couple of years ago after being with Dish at least 15 years, namely Dish dropped the AMC channel line up then.
Since then, I’ve never looked back, even though DirecTV is a bit more expensive. I like the GUI and functions of DirecTV better, and like the fact that they attempt to start and stop program recordings when the programs actually start and stop instead of on automatic half hour boundaries like Dish always used to do.
I wish more people would get up off their lazy butts and switch from service providers who pull these kinds of stunts. It’s really the only thing they’re going to pay attention to, namely mass numbers of customers fleeing to competitors.
Newsmax is channel 349 on Direct TV.
We had Dish before, we’ve switched around packages as well. At least Dish had the Blaze which was reasonably good. From what I know, Direct TV has not picked up Blaze TV yet.
Greetings BeadCounter:
We do miss Judge Jeannine, too. Other than her show, can’t say I miss much else about FoxSnooze and their screaming faces with annoying ADD graphic borders.
We’ve been watching NewsMax, but unfortunately the more we watch, the more we find Ed Berliner just a annoyingly pompous, Keith Olbermann wannabee.
Beck’s TheBlaze is pretty decent content for a start-up network.
For The Record, with Laurie Dhue is much better than anything else currently billed as “investigative” in broadcast journalism.
Dana Loesh’s #DailyDana is something we watch almost daily. We love how Dana reads her hate mail, reminding haters she’s going to have more money for baby Jesus, just by her reading their bile.
And Stu’s Wonderful World of Stu mocking pop culture and liberal icons is laugh out loud funny.
Cheers,
OLA
I assumed all providers went through this BS periodically, but it appears that DISH is indeed the worst offender. I remember some issues years back with DISH and the Hallmark channels and the Lifetime channels as well. I guess I didn't get as outraged as I should have because the channels in question weren't MY channels; so I took the "first they came for the socialists..." approach, which was really selfish of me.
I am days away from the DirecTV installation.
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