When will they learn? Dish Network would rather alienate it's customers and programming partners than step up and negotiate a programming contract in a civilized manor. This time it's WLNS TV6, serving the Lansing - Jackson Michigan area, owned Young Broadcasting who understandably wants Dish Network to pay a penny per day per subscriber in the local DMA.
Here's a statement from the WLNS website: DISH's contract with WLNS TV 6
originally expires on December 10, 2008 . WLNS TV offered a short
extension of the contract to alllow more time to reach an agreement
with DISH. The extension was not accepted by DISH For the past several
months our company has attempted to reach a new agreement with DISH.
Unfortunately DISH has elected not to accept our proposal.
I don't think this is too much to ask considering both Dish Network and DIRECTV charge $4.99 for you to receive the local channels over satellite. Yes, the local over the air broadcast channels are free but only if you have an acceptable off-air antenna but many in rural areas cannot receive their local channels unless they subscribe to Cable TV or Satellite TV. Since the satcasters are charging a fee to receive these channels, they should pay the programmer for the redistribution rights and $.30 per month per subscriber is not too much to ask.
Dish Network has been through these battles many times with both over-the-air broadasters as well as other programmers but somehow fails to learn it's lesson. Each time, they lose subscribers because you can bet that many of those who rely on Dish Network to supply the affected channels have already or will be calling DIRECTV or their local cable operator to switch. Oddly enough, how often do you here of these programming fights with DIRECTV?
