As satellite TV tanks, Dish says merger with DirectTV is “inevitable”
Dish Chairman Ergen says merger is likely because of threat from streaming TV. …
reader comments
92 with 65 posters participating
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen yesterday said a merger with the AT&T-owned DirecTV is “probably inevitable.”
Dish, the second biggest satellite TV company behind DirecTV, lost 194,000 subscribers in Q4 2019 and ended the year with 11.99 million TV customers. That includes 9.4 million satellite TV customers and 2.59 million customers of Sling TV, Dish’s online streaming service. The satellite division lost 100,000 subscribers while Sling TV lost 94,000.
On an earnings call yesterday, a financial analyst asked Ergen for his thoughts on a Dish/DirecTV merger, noting that DirecTV is “in increased trouble” and that the US government seems to have “amenability to large-scale transactions.”
“We’ll start with Dish/DirecTV,” Ergen said in response. “It’s probably inevitable that those two should go together just because the growth in TV is not coming from linear satellite TV providers. It’s coming from huge programmers, and trillion-dollar companies. So I think the regulatory environment, usually it’s behind the marketplace, but I think that becomes increasingly likely that that makes logical sense.”
Ergen added that a merger could face “regulatory issues.” But a Dish/DirecTV combination would still “make some sense” because of the competitive challenge that streaming services pose to traditional pay-TV providers like the satellite companies. “You can’t swim upstream against a real tide of the over-the-top, big players,” Ergen said. Seeking Alpha posted a transcript of the earnings call; audio is available in a webcast.
Any merger would have to involve AT&T, which bought DirecTV for $48.5 billion in 2015. If a merger
Continue reading – Article source
