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Television The Almighty Buck

Dish Pulls Fox News, Fox Business Network As Talks Break Down 275

An anonymous reader writes Fox News and Fox Business were pulled by Dish Network over the weekend, as both continue to argue over a fee agreement. From the article: "Dish said in a statement early Sunday morning that 21st Century Fox had blocked access to the two networks after Dish balked when rates for other networks owned by the media conglomerate were made a part of the negotiations. Tim Carry, executive vice president of distribution at Fox News Channel, countered in a statement that "Dish prematurely ceased distribution of Fox News in an attempt to intimidate and sway our negotiations. It is unfortunate that the millions of Fox News viewers on Dish were used as pawns by their provider. Hopefully they will vote with their hard earned money and seek another one of our other valued distributors immediately."
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Dish Pulls Fox News, Fox Business Network As Talks Break Down

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21, 2014 @11:41AM (#48646577)

    Fox news did not report it.

    • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @12:01PM (#48646669) Journal
      Perhaps if the story'd been more fair and balanced?
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In unrelated news: Average IQ up 5 points in US.

      When did you leave?

  • by damn_registrars ( 1103043 ) <damn.registrars@gmail.com> on Sunday December 21, 2014 @11:41AM (#48646585) Homepage Journal
    Samzenpus forgot to blame this on the freedom-oppressing and america-hating labor unions. Clearly they are some how at fault here if fox news has been disconnected. I would have expected him to at least have read the article far enough to find a way to make that connection happen.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kimvette ( 919543 )

      Faux News is not much of a loss. :)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by kimvette ( 919543 )

        -1, Flamebait? Obviously someone with mod points has no sense of humor. This is why people jokingly refer to Fox News as "Faux news:"

        http://www.addictinginfo.org/2... [addictinginfo.org]

        http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]

        http://www.alternet.org/news-a... [alternet.org]

        http://mathbabe.org/2012/04/21... [mathbabe.org]

        http://foxnewsboycott.com/fox-... [foxnewsboycott.com]

        http://www.google.com/url?sa=t... [google.com]

        http://www.google.com/url?sa=t... [google.com]

        http://www.salon.com/2013/10/1... [salon.com]

    • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @12:24PM (#48646801)
      I actually do see a connection to unions here - if you're not genuinely willing to walk away from a bad deal, you're not actually negotiating. Businesses know this and it sometimes results in temporary outages, such as a TV channel or the Amazon dispute with publishers. In America we hardly have unions any more, and our media reports on strikes (e.g. a railroad strike in France) with derision and as a sign of a failed system. But I see it as a sign of tough negotiations between parties who both have something to lose. Ideally, each industry would have about as many unions as it has employers, and there would be more than one of each.

      I actually don't like the idea of being a faceless member of a collective, or causing a great divide between management and workers. But right now we have a situation where one side is organized and using its leverage to drive a tough bargain (with companies growing ever-larger, and more profitable), and the other is just lying down.

      • In America we hardly have unions any more...

        I didn't realize that 11.3% of the US workforce hardly exists.

        In 2013, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were
        members of unions--was 11.3 percent ... The number of wage and salary workers belonging to
        unions, at 14.5 million, was little different from 2012. -- UNION MEMBERS -- 2013 [bls.gov]

        • Having members and actually having power are two different things, the person you replied to was saying unions don't exist with the teeth that they used to.

          We have unions in name only. Every single time the UAW contract comes up at my company they rabble back and forth and then "hurray, we reached an agreement." Union bosses and contractor get their cut for the 'negotiation'. Employees don't really get anything and the people at top win.

          The standard of living for a lot of the US would improve if more people

        • I didn't realize that 11.3% of the US workforce hardly exists.

          A lot of people don't realize that. Have you heard about the Ferguson protests? Blacks make up 13% of the US population yet they are treated as an insignificant minority. In America the Black population doesn't count for that much and it is larger than the population of union workers. Draw your own conclusions or analogies using this additional point of view.

        • In America we hardly have unions any more...

          I didn't realize that 11.3% of the US workforce hardly exists.

          Every year that number goes down or at best stays the same. Either way every year the unions give up a little more of what little power they have. Bargaining is supposed to be a give-and-take procedure where labor gets some of what they want and management gets some of what they want. Yet every time labor comes to the table management further diminishes their clout. With union enrollment this low it is very easy for management to say "we'll just hire non-union replacements for you" and labor knows that

          • by HiThere ( 15173 )

            The problem is that if you go back to when unions were relatively powerful, the ones who were powerful were the management of the unions. And they often didn't do well by their members. (Other times they did, but ran afoul of some law or other, some times a reasonable one.)

            Centers of power tend to become corrupt, because corrupt people are attracted to them more strongly than those who are not corrupt.

      • Pretty well put, I mostly agree, and am glad you wrote that. One point on your very last statement: do keep in mind that for many public and infrastructure unions (like police, government admins, teachers, bus drivers, etc.) it's been made illegal to go on strike by law, or as part of a contract required by the employer. I agree that that pretty much takes the possibility of fair negotiations off the table.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jd2112 ( 1535857 )

      Samzenpus forgot to blame this on the freedom-oppressing and america-hating labor unions. Clearly they are some how at fault here if fox news has been disconnected. I would have expected him to at least have read the article far enough to find a way to make that connection happen.

      No it's Obama's fault. I don't know how but *everything* bad is Obama's fault.
      (Perhaps I've been watching too much Fox News.)

  • Dish Customer Here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @11:55AM (#48646639) Journal
    We also lost CNN and the Turner stations in October/November due to a renewal disagreement.

    This is far from limited to just Dish customers, as each major cable provider has to renegotiate regularly.

    I've noticed a common theme, though... no matter who you talk to, it's the other greedy bastard who's being unreasonable.

    • by kimvette ( 919543 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @12:00PM (#48646663) Homepage Journal

      I have an idea - let them run adverts and offer the channels for free, OR charge cable and dish companies (ultimately the viewer) for the channels and run no adverts. End the greedy double-dipping. Cable and Satellite carriers perform a service by increasing their potential viewer share, which increases their advertising value. It is the networks who are greedy, not the rebroadcasters.

      • I wonder what it would take for Dish to just start their own channels and programming.

        Netflix has done it. Amazon has done it. Yahoo is doing it with Community. I would actually subscribe to dish if they had new original programming and not Fox News.

    • by dj245 ( 732906 )

      We also lost CNN and the Turner stations in October/November due to a renewal disagreement.

      This is far from limited to just Dish customers, as each major cable provider has to renegotiate regularly.

      I've noticed a common theme, though... no matter who you talk to, it's the other greedy bastard who's being unreasonable.

      That just shows how nasty the negotiations are- each company is employing their PR department to push statements and try to influence the public as part of an overall negotiation strategy. Bringing in other people, especially one of a higher authority, into a negotiation is standard practice in negotiations (car sales manager is one good example). Trying to rope your customers into influencing a negotiation, however, is unusual and generally only happens when the negotiation is so nasty that you want peop

    • I would side with Dish in this disagreement. Fox wants to jack up the distribution fees and Dish is telling them no. If the fees go up Dish will pass that right along to you the customer.

    • ...and I didn't miss CNN at all. At work they moved the cafeteria TVs to CNBC. At home if I watched the news at all I switched to Al Jazeera America to check them out. When CNN came back work switched em back.

      All of these news channels are replaceable. If Dishes loses they'll pass the rate increase on to me, and I'd rather lose one or two of them. Losing Fox is just a bonus.

    • by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @12:38PM (#48646889)

      Dish costs less because they're willing to tolerate these lockouts... DirecTV is similar and available most places Dish is, and gets its deals done on time, but has to pay more and passes the costs on to consumers.

    • Apparently the news stations are shouting "price increase!" and DirecTV accepted and Dish, as usual, rejected.

      • by AJWM ( 19027 )

        This.

        Also, Dish can't retransmit what it doesn't have a contract for, and the contract expired. The disagreement is over the terms of a new contract.

        Apparently the various network heads haven't learned, despite plenty of opportunities to, that Charlie Ergen doesn't bluff.

    • by jd2112 ( 1535857 )

      I've noticed a common theme, though... no matter who you talk to, it's the other greedy bastard who's being unreasonable.

      I think we can agree: All of the greedy bastards are being unreasonable.

    • by Qzukk ( 229616 )

      Welcome to what awaits the internet post-neutrality: more of the same, only online, and with fewer scrolling banners letting you know it's the other guy's fault.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    good riddance. Please die.

    Thanks,
    Everyone.

  • You realize this has nothing to do with capitalism, at least of the free market variety. They conflict is over who is going to get the money when they raise the rates. It's essentially which group of crooks is going to get to gouge customers.

    The primary beneficiaries are the upper management. No big corporation is run for the clients, stockholders, or employes who do the real work. It's all intended to enrich the people at the top.

    It's how things are right now: no democracy, no capitalism, no freedom. Not

    • by kanweg ( 771128 )

      The interesting thing was also that the Fox rep said: "Hopefully they will vote with their hard earned money". I can't imagine that it was Fox insisting on a lower compensation for their shows. So, Dish could choose either to increase the rate for the customers and take their hard earned dollars for Fox or cough the money up themselves. Is it that Carry is too stupid to realise this (just uttering one of the typical cliche expressions) or what?

      Bert

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21, 2014 @12:19PM (#48646765)

    When Turner Networks pulled their newschannels like CNN, CNNi, and HLN during the negotiations with Dish, Dish substituted for Glen Beck's Blaze channel and Al-Jazeera America. This time, Dish only substituted Beck's Blaze for one of the Fox News channels. I'm guessing that putting Al-Jazeera in as a substitute for Fox News would have caused a substantial portion of Dish customer's heads to explode. So kudos for Dish for thinking of the cranial integrity of their customers.

  • In areas with bad or no cable TV service, Dish Network and DirecTV can be your only option. Dish has these channel dropping problems because they hold the line on price, refusing to pay up for overpriced channels. In the case of Fox, Rupert controls both the channel and the delivery service so Fox-branded channels will most likely never go down on DirecTV... but that causes DirecTV to cost more.

    If you can't handle the loss of your favorite channel, then you don't want Dish, you want DirecTV or a cable servi

  • It is unfortunate that the millions of Fox News viewers on Dish were used as pawns by their provider. Hopefully they will vote with their hard earned money and seek another one of our other valued distributors immediately.

    Stop being their pawns, do our bidding! Choke their cannon with your dead! And peel us some grapes!

  • Dish customer here (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    These outages can be pain, but as long as it keeps my bill from increasing, I support Dish's tough negotiating tactics.

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @12:49PM (#48646955)

    I don't really understand the issues. How much was Dish charging Fox News to deliver their content to Dish viewers? And what sort of fee increases was Dish asking for?

    • by AJWM ( 19027 )

      You've got that backwards (or I'm missing the sarcasm).

      Dish has to pay Fox News to retransmit Fox's content (copyrights!), Fox wanted to increase the price and/or require Dish to carry additional Fox-owned channels as part of the same contract.

      When Fox (or any other network in negotiations) claims that "Dish pulled the channel", they're stretching the truth. What they really mean is "the contract expired, and Dish cravenly stopped retransmitting our copyrighted content so we couldn't sue them for infringem

      • It was probably sarcastic, but from a cost standpoint the GP has a point. Fox gives their signal "for free" OTA and makes money on advertising. Seems like the distributors could reverse the table if they wanted to play hardball. What good is a phone is you are unable to speak?

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          It was probably sarcastic

          Probably.

          We'll see when Netflix starts charging Verizon and AT&T for distributing their content.

    • by bledri ( 1283728 )

      I don't really understand the issues. How much was Dish charging Fox News to deliver their content to Dish viewers? And what sort of fee increases was Dish asking for?

      Brilliant!

  • FTFA: 21st Century Fox had blocked access to the two networks ... Dish prematurely ceased distribution of Fox News

    So each one is blaming the other...

  • Generally speaking, major owners of multiple networks such as Fox often try to force distributors (cable networks, dish, etc) to bundle all of their networks. Kind of an all-or-nothing approach. Otherwise networks like Fox News just wouldn't get distributed at all. It doesn't have a large enough following.

    This is slowly changing as peoples viewing habits change. People are watching less T.V. these days and that is shifting the cost model such that the 'junk' channels are now more of a drag on profits vs

  • So my grandmother who lives where there is no cable TV is only being brainwashed by the Christian Broadcast Network now.... (seriously)

  • First they lose all the Time Warner channels, then they lost CBS, now they lost all the Fox Channels...

    Pretty soon there's going to be no actual channels left on DISH.

  • Suddenlink just cut all of Viacom last month because negotiations broke down too.

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