Just in time for the upcoming holiday season, the poster child of bad pay-TV behavior is up to his usual bully-boy tactics.
Dish Network’s Charlie Ergen, the Sir Charles of TV Blackouts, has blacked out CNN and is now threatening to do the same with the TNT and CBS programming.
Sorry, Sir Charles. America is not that gullible.
There’s a reason Dish subscriber totals have remained flat over the past year, with nearly as many subscribers discontinuing service as those signing up with the satellite provider. In fact, Dish has experienced a net loss of 16,000 pay-TV subscribers through the first three quarters of 2014.
Dish has joined two other pay-TV companies, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV, to form the American Television Alliance. ATVA’s strategy, led by the big three, is simple — to manufacture as many TV blackouts of both cable networks and local broadcast stations as possible in hopes that Congress will “reform” a system that ATVA’s members have deliberately tried to break.
Case in point, DirecTV is entering into its own programming talks with the AMC network and there is no guarantees that an agreement will quickly be reached between the two companies.
It’s a brazen approach, worthy of three pay-TV companies that annually are rated among the worst companies in America.
ATVA—which should consider changing its name to the American TV Blackout Alliance—has the audacity to profess itself “pro-consumer.” The ‘big three,’ Dish, DirectTV and Time Warner Cable, have been at the heart of 90% of all retransmission consent disputes with broadcasters alone since January 2013.
Dish’s current programming dispute with Turner Broadcasting, now in its third week, has no clear end in sight. Also beyond view is any potential relief for Dish customers who must bear the burden of Ergen’s most recent programming blackouts involving CNN, TruTV the Cartoon Network and other channels.
Reports indicate that Dish is also strong-arming Turner Broadcasting by demanding that the video programmer include its most popular cable channels — TNT and TBS — in the current discussions for fair compensation, even though the contract term for those channels has yet to expire with Dish.
According to news reports, retransmission consent talks between Dish and CBS are leading nowhere as well, with only a few short weeks remaining before the contract expires.
Separately, AMC recently felt compelled to take unusual marketing steps to warn DirecTV subscribers, via commercials, that they may lose access to their channel and its popular show “The Walking Dead” if the cable network is unable to successfully negotiate a new programming distribution deal with DirecTV by early December.
The pay-TV linchpin knows exactly what it is doing and their gamesmanship of the system is getting tiresome for their subscribers.
For the sake of American consumers and the continued evolution of the video marketplace, let’s hope that Washington lawmakers and thought-leaders alike see through the American TV Blackout Alliance’s regulatory ploy in programming disputes with cable networks and broadcasters.
There’s no true rationale for rewarding their bad behavior in the marketplace.
Robert C. Kenny is director of Public Affairs for TVfreedom.org, a coalition of local broadcasters, community advocates, network TV affiliate associations and other independent organizations advocating for preserving the retransmission consent regime. He is a former press secretary at the FCC.
