Posted on 01/15/2015 4:05:31 PM PST by Kaslin
One look at the political history of Dish Network founder and Chairman Charles Ergen places the idea that the network dropped Fox News over a simple contract dispute in serious doubt.
Since Dec. 20, when the Dish network dropped Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, the former has lost about 90,000 subscribers.
The Media Research Center’s Dan Joseph decided to take a look at OpenSecrets documents revealing Ergen’s political donations from last year, which immediately raised some red flags. Ergen donated a total of $64,000 to the Democratic Senatorial campaign Committee, according to the report.
As Joseph writes, Ergen’s donating record obviously doesn’t prove he is intentionally blocking Fox out of spite for his political preferences. But, that’s not all:
In 2012, a federal complaint was filed against Ergen in which several company executives alleged that he had intimidated them into making contributions to specific candidates, the majority of which were Democrats.
The claim was filed by an unnamed company insider who accused Ergen of "forcing" Dish Network’s Chief Operating Officer Bernard Han to donate to a Democratic Party candidate in the 2009/2010 election cycle.
The complaint also claimed that Han was “encouraged" to attend Democratic functions and fundraisers and that other Dish employees were strong-armed by Ergen in a similar way.
Hm, now you have to admit that is a little suspicious.
Fox News has consistently come out on top in the ratings battle, and Americans continue to choose it as the most trusted news source on TV.
Dish contract or not, I’ll think they’ll be just fine.
I warned Dish we would drop them if they didn’t get Fox back. The first time I called they said “well we put The Blaze on in Fox’s place”. Ha, like that made it all better Sunday a Direct TV guy came and switched us over.
some nasty bucks there.
My direct installer said that he was replacing 2-3 a day and there are 120 installers in his area with the same numbers. I think that the 90,000 is going to prove to be low. There is fear that other channels are going to do the same thing to them so first it is FNC, then ESPN? Glad to be rid of dish.
Every week it was a different technical problem. They never would replace my equipment. The new direct stuff is the size of playing cards, not the size of an old VCR!
Guess I will be calling Direct TV Monday.
Don’t be stupid. Was Dish ultra conservative last fall whenCNN was gone for a month?
It’s business. Negitiations. Nothing to do with the CEOs politics.
We’re cancelling so at least 90,001.
Fox doesn’t show back up on my set, Dish gonna take a hike shortly as well.
Charlie was supposedly a conservative.
Fox is back on Dish.
But I’m switching to Verizon FIOS anyway. I already use Verizon Fios for my internet ISP.
Yes I just heard from a friend whos husband is an installer, Fox is back on Dish. Oh well, I switched.
I was considering switching to Dish from DirecTV to enjoy the savings vis the new customer perks - glad I held off.
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