Where are the Dish people?

[Hack]

Where are the Dish people when a bankrupt or financially challenged cable company is raising rates like $4 dollars at once in a smaller city and the locals (people for you dishheaded) aren’t happy about it because most probably only get analog channels and they’re mad as hell since they perceive they aren’t getting good value as it is according to their rants in the local rag.

What’s too bad is that it’s not happening in my town but in a city around 30-40 miles away. I think the Dish people should swarm into this city and put this city’s borderline locals (channels for the dishheaded) that may be available in the future on the front burner and just put them up and take over the damn city with free DBS systems and create a goal of the first cableless city in the country. It’s too bad that this isn’t happening in my town or I could have a lot of fun with this.

BTW, the culprit is Charter which is selling some or all of its systems to a new company called Atlantic Broadband or something like that. Hmmm... The bad guys raise the rates for the newcomers who are about to come and save the day. I smell a rat.

[pez2002]

why dont you all just merge and call it DBSWORLD



Opps i should not put my ideas out there Like that

[Richard King]

Give people a clue as to what city you are talking about.

[Jacob S]

I remember seeing a Charlie Chat where they showed switching over all customers to the Dish Network satellite system, giving all of them a free system and free install because the cable system went bankrupt and the people were going to have no television service for that area. If I am not mistaken I remembered Charlie mentioning that if someone has a city that is struggling such as this then they would be more than happy to hear from you to look into it and to switching over more cities from cable to satellite.

[BobMurdoch]

I think this was a Colorado community about 2 years ago who had this......

[Phil T]

It was Ouray, Colorado.

I found this article doing a yahoo search:

Satellite TV refinds its roots
By Christopher Parkes in Los Angeles Published: October 6 2000
19:02GMT
| Last Updated: October 8 2000 17:27GMT

Two months ago, as the local cable company pulled the plug on its
television service, a fleet of vans drove into Ouray, Colorado, and
disgorged 22 engineers.

They bolted free EchoStar satellite dishes onto every home and hotel,
leaving the residents to enjoy more than twice as many TV channels as
before, at two-thirds the monthly cost of cable, and with the
prospects
of upgrading to 500 channels.

The experience of this mountain resort demonstrates that the US
satellite TV industry has not neglected its roots in under-served
rural
America.

It also shows that the two remaining direct broadcast satellite (DBS)
operators, EchoStar and DirecTV, have lost none of the marketing
aggression that has won them a 13 per cent share of the US
subscription
TV market, from a standing start about five years ago.

Industry experts and analysts agree the duo are on track to double
that
share by the end of 2003.

They also agree that with the impending sale of DirecTV, the core of
General Motors' Hughes Electronics subsidiary, EchoStar will also
become a target for a bigger media group.

News Corporation, currently manoeuvring to bid for DirecTV, the
market
leader, is one of several potential bidders that could include Walt
Disney, NBC and Viacom.

For Rupert Murdoch, News Corp chief, the prospect represents his
third
foray into the US satellite business. Attempts to start from scratch
were aborted at a late stage, and a planned move into EchoStar ended
bitterly.

Now the stakes are higher. With most of the nation's cable pipelines
locked up inside, or linked with, large media groups (Time Warner
leads
with about 12.5m subscribers, compared with DirecTV's 8.5m),
satellite
offers the only remaining assured route for content providers to paid-
for TV distribution.

Walt Disney, which bought the ABC over-the-air broadcast network in
1996 to guarantee distribution for its content, was dismayed to
discover shortly afterwards that cable, upgraded to handle digital
signals, was the medium of the future.

Since then, satellite operators have entered the picture with a
vengeance. Their "subscriber acquisition" costs today hover at about
$450 per household, and Jimmy Schaeffler, founder of the Carmel
Group,
sees no let-up until at least the end of 2003.

Although acquisition costs were once seen as a burden on DBS
providers,
returns on the investment start to flow in less than a year, with
average customers paying $60 a month, as Mr Schaeffler points out.

By the end of 2003, Mr Schaeffler expects DirecTV to command 61 per
cent and EchoStar 39 per cent of the direct-to-home market, which by
his estimates will serve 21m-28m customers.

"Cable has been so slow to respond," he says, blaming risk aversion,
lack of aggression and sluggish introduction of long-promised
"bundled"
TV, internet access, video on demand and telephone services.

On the other hand, cable companies have been held back by mounting
costs. Their capital expenditure on upgrading rose 15 per cent last
year, and programming expenses increased more than 16 per cent,
according to the Federal Communications Commission.

At the same time, the cost of cable to the average consumer rose only
about 4 per cent.

The FCC, which early last decade capped cable prices following
consumer
complaints, maintains a strict watch on the industry's billings. It
has
also helped to foster DBS with its support for legislation that now
allows the services to beam local TV station signals into specific
markets.

The lack of local-to-local programmes, and their regional news and
weather services, has long been the main obstacle to satellite
operators' expansion into urban markets.

Now, the impact of the new laws is showing up both in record
subscriber
growth rates this year and rising penetration of urban markets.

According to a recent survey by The Yankee Group, 7 per cent of urban
and 13 per cent of suburban homes now watch satellite programmes, up
from 4 per cent and 9 per cent respectively in 1999.

Other potential obstacles to progress are also falling away with the
reduction of digital cable's current advantage in two-way signal
traffic, which allows telephony and high-speed internet.

Hughes, DirecTV's parent, and three other providers will start
selling
new systems later this year that will convert the increasingly
familiar
dishes into receiver-transmitters, propelling the people of Ouray one
stage further into the space age.

[DarrellP]

You should see my town of Woodburn after the cable company when greedy last year, Dish's are popping up everywhere. I would bet that 1 in 3 houses are Dish enabled.

[Cyclone]

In my neighborhood, the Cable Company failed to wire the development while it was under construction. When we all moved in and called the cable company for service, we were told "Can't help you, call back in 3 months". What? No TV for 3 months?!?

Long story short, My neighborhood is a sea of Dishes. Better than 60% here and I'm not exagerating.

[Mike Richardson]

In my neighborhood, the Cable Company failed to wire the development while it was under construction. When we all moved in and called the cable company for service, we were told "Can't help you, call back in 3 months". What? No TV for 3 months?!?

Long story short, My neighborhood is a sea of Dishes. Better than 60% here and I'm not exagerating.

Exactly the same here. 3 out of 4 TV subscribers in my neighborhood (at least) have DBS. That's why I have it too.