News Corp buys control of DirecTV

[blingbling]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5-641087,00.html

[Bill R]

This is going to make thing interesting for Charlie and company.

[blingbling]

:) I can't wait! I hope D* and E* customers greatly benefit from the upcoming battles. You have to wonder how much of it is going to be personal.

[PSB]

Bob, will want to change the name to USKYA or SKYUSA . I give it six months to name change.

[TNGTony]

PSB, Originally when Rup was buying Echostar years ago it was to be A Sky B. American Sky Broadcasting

See ya
Tony

[Dgenx321]

SkyDirect has a nice ring..

[Rick_EE]

SkyFox

[DCSholtis]

SkyDirect

[DCSholtis]

Originally posted by blingbling
:) I can't wait! I hope D* and E* customers greatly benefit from the upcoming battles. You have to wonder how much of it is going to be personal.
Considering that Charlie went right under Ruperts nose and bid on D* at the last moment 3yrs ago...This is going to get REAL personal...IMO.

[Frapp]

With the DirecTV name being such a huge, well known and powerful established name, I fail to see what the reasoning would be to changing it.

But, we all should know in the near future :shrug:

[Mike123abc]

DirecTV could be reduced to a product name. American Sky Broadcasting could be the company name and DirecTV could be the product.

[Rick P]

bingo....

DirecTv provided by A$kyB

[DCSholtis]

Nope......SkyDirect

[raj2001]

Charlie is probably quaking in his boots about now....

[raj2001]

Originally posted by Rick Densing
SkyFox

SkyFox is their NYC news chopper.

[shilton]

This announcement really comes as no surprise to most and I am not so sure that Rupert will be too bent out of shape that Charlie gave him a run for the money the 1st time, as the delays with the Dish Merger caused DirecTv to erode somewhat while Dish was growing and as a result, Rupert will most likely get DirecTV for far less than it is worth. I think what we will see is more differences in who can offer what, for example I bet most of the fox nets drop off Dish eventually because of course they will be overpriced and then Charlie will get in bed with Disney or something and next thing you know ESPN will drop off DirecTV. In the end though, this will all be great for everyone because good competition never hurt anyone. I bet each company will be more agressive on the local fronts and with regard to which new stations it adds. How long can Charlie say Trio and PBS Kids are worthless with Rupert burning up his heels??? Competition is good...I welcome this with open arms. I bet both DirecTV and Dish will be all the better for it in the end as it will force them both to be more honest to the market and the consumer's wants and needs.

[Jacob S]

It could be just as bad, Direct raises prices, Dish follows, Direct again, Dish follows again. Dish has seemed to take its own path when it came to certain things but at the same time they have followed each other at times on price increases.

I hope big competition results out of this.

[lee635]

It could also be bad if the it follows the pay movie channel development where previously you could get just HBO and get all the movies. Now with exclusive contracts you have to buy several pay channels to get all the movies.

I hope we don't get to where you have to buy D* and E* to get what you want....

[shilton]

Rupert quoted in the past day or so as saying "DON'T EXPECT ANY MAJOR CHANGES TO DIRECTV TILL AT LEAST 2005" So I guess that gives Charlie some breathing room for now (plus time to build and launch a few new birds too)

[DCSholtis]

Shilton, I havent seen that quote anywhere from Rupert.....got any links to stories where he said that?!!!

[Jacob S]

Even if that was the case, he could be planning those changes and then all of a sudden, boom, changes galore, bc if it is major changes that would happen then it would take a while to bring those changes about. Even if it may not happen for another few years the planning and developement of those changes could be heard about, so this could mean that he does plan on changing some things.

[Ken_F]

There's really a lot we don't know. We don't know, for instance, how many years there are remaining on the DirecTV-Tivo licensing agreement. We don't what agreements DirecTV currently has in place with various consumer electronics firms, who have contracted to produce DirecTV receivers. We don't know what, if any, plans DirecTV has or had for Ku spectrum.

I doubt DirecTV could suddenly move to a new receiver or PVR platform anytime soon, even if it wanted to. At some point, however, News Corp will probably want to leverage the economies of scale by deploying a common / similiar platform across its UK and U.S. satellite services.