What’s that? You haven’t wanted to put your foot through your tv screen in about 12 months?
Don’t worry, Glenn Beck is on the case.
While VH1 was busy reviving Pop-Up Video to blast DirecTV over the decision to drop Viacom channels, AMC decided to let an extremely persuasive chemistry teacher from Albuquerque do the talking. This Sunday, when the fifth and final season of Breaking Bad premieres, DISH subscribers who currently cannot access AMC will be able to watch a live stream of the episode on the network’s website. How’s that for appealing directly to the consumer? source
If we’re going to spend all this money on content it has to be measured and monetized.NBC Broadcast Chairman Ted Harbert • Expressing his displeasure with Dish Network’s newly announced Hopper DVR, which includes an “Auto-Hop” commercial-skipping feature, during a presentation at Radio City Music Hall on Monday. (The player has been available since March.) Harbert also declined to comment on whether or not NBC’s legal department was evaluating the company’s the legal options. Fox entertainment chairman Peter Rice was skeptical as well, telling reporters he thought releasing such a device was a “strange thing to do,” but said his company absolutely was not looking into legal action at this time. source (via • follow)
legospaceship asks: Don’t you think it’s a non issue, ultimately? Can you see the core of their streaming business going anywhere? I don’t see any other folks in the space being able to rise up and challenge them right now unless i am missing something.
» SFB says: I wouldn’t be so sure it’s a complete non-issue. This isn’t to say they’re going away anytime soon, but they’ve lost nearly three quarters of their market value in just a few months — that could lead to a change at the top. They’ve hurt their customer relations pretty severely in that time, and while they can get it back eventually, they’re starting fo face more difficult factors which could hurt their business over time. The costs for their streaming business are rising. There’s a chance they’ll see some significant competition in the next year or two (Dish Network and Hulu are each currently in the midst of an upswing, and Dish has content deals comparable to Netflix, including the Starz deal Netflix is losing). The real question is, can they bounce back? — Ernie @ SFB
Outages are being reported in multiple states. The network lost a satellite! Here’s a list of the channels shut down. Most of them are HD. Must be time to turn on the Roku. (src ProducerMatthew)
» A competitive deal? Dish Network, known mostly for its satellite dishes and for being the satellite company that isn’t DirecTV, will earn a competitive advantage by branching out with Blockbuster, which has a large infrastructure, if not money to pay for said infrastructure. For example, Dish Network could also offer Blockbuster’s Netflix-like DVD service on top of their already-robust satellite service. It’s synergy, folks! Another way to look at this: Blockbuster shares were delisted after trading for less than $1 for nearly a year. Netflix shares are trading around $250.
Al Jazeera Arabic has been carried on Dish Network’s Arabic-language package for years. I have yet to hear any subscriber complain to Dish Network about their carriage of the channel, nor have I heard of any group calling for a boycott of Dish Network.
(Note: Except cable systems in Washington DC, Al Jazeera English is currently only carried on FTA satellite in the United States, which most people don’t own and have never heard of)
Quick correction: Two cable systems in Vermont and Ohio carry it, and the D.C. coverage is over-the-air on a digital subchannel which also carries a number of international broadcasts – a public television station that doesn’t have anything in common with PBS. It’s worth noting that Russia Today, which has a lot in common with al-Jazeera in terms of when it entered the U.S. market and overall approach to content, is actually carried on a few cable providers.
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