Charlie Ergen, the founder and billionaire owner of US pay-TV broadcaster Dish Network, has talked for a couple of years about the “inevitability” of merging with arch-rival DirecTV. Both are losing subscribers at a worrying rate, and common sense suggests that a merger is the only route to saving cash, exploiting synergies and reducing the […]
US pay-TV operator DISH Network has confirmed a recent ransomware attack which impacted 300,000 names, mostly employees. The confirmation of the attack, which happened in February, emerged in legal documents submitted to Maine’s Attorney General, and stated that while customer databases were unaffected the hackers accessed employee records during the cyber-attack. The initial attack caused […]
Pay-TV operator DISH Network has suffered a major fall in subscribers according to its Q1 financials. Dish TV and its OTT sister service Sling TV, lost an overall 552,000 subscribers during the first quarter of the year. The same period in 2022 saw losses of 462,000 net subscribers (and 268,000 in Q4/2022). The Charlie Ergen-backed […]
Barely two weeks ago on March 10th, Charlie Ergen’s DBS DISH Network lost a Utah jury verdict on a patent lawsuit with plaintiff ClearPlay. The verdict saw the Court award ClearPlay $469 million (€434m) in compensation. The action alleged that DISH’s ‘AutoHop/Hopper’ functions used ClearPlay’s patented skipping feature. ClearPlay’s technology allowed users to skip what […]
In related cases, a federal district court and a federal bankruptcy court, both in Florida, have ordered Hisham Manse Ibrahem and Nezar Saeed Hammo, US-based sellers of the pirate service ATN, to pay $32,100,000 (€29.8m) in combined damages for wilful copyright infringement. The cases were filed by DISH Network, a member of trade body the […]
The US is continuing to see a steady evaporation of satellite TV subscribers. DirecTV, owned by AT&T, has lost a worrying 47 per cent of its subscribers since it was acquired by AT&T in 2015. Charlie Ergen’s DISH Network is in a similar situation and in an SEC filing on January 17th admitted that it […]
A federal court in Texas has ordered a local seller of the Super Arab IPTV service to pay $2.1 million (€1.97m) in damages for wilful copyright infringement while also ordering the removal of IBCAP (a coalition of leading international and US content owners, broadcasters and distributors) member channels from the pirate service. The case was […]
The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) has confirmed that a federal court in Michigan has ordered the removal of IBCAP member channels from the iStar IPTV service, one of the largest pirate services offering multicultural content in the US. The case was filed by IBCAP member DISH Network. This order follows a judgment and […]
DISH Network, the US pay-TV provider, has reported revenue totalling $4.10 billion (€4.1bn) for the quarter ending September 30th 2022, compared to $4.45 billion for the corresponding period in 2021. Net income attributable to DISH Network totalled $412 million for the third quarter 2022, compared to $557 million for the year-ago quarter. Diluted earnings per […]
A federal court in New York has issued a judgment of $26,550,000 (€26.6m) against Sanjeev Kumar and Tsvetomir Dobrilov, operators of the My Indian TV service and the MyIndian.tv and NewMyIndian.tv websites. The judgment is against the operators personally. The case was filed by DISH Network, a member of the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy […]