Fox News Fans Fight Back After Dish Blackout Enters
Second Week
The battle between Dish Network and
Fox News has now reached comical levels, with Dish dishing out all the
hilarious rhetoric.
Throw out any partisan angle here
and simply look at the numbers: Fox is a powerhouse in the cable world. It
finishes #1 in cable news by a country mile and even topped all cable
competitors in primetime in Q3, even beating heavyweights ESPN, USA and TNT.
More importantly — and any cable news executive will agree with this assessment
— its audience is fiercely loyal to the product.
“I don’t think you can fully capture
the value Fox News brings by looking at the Nielsen ratings alone,” said Craig
Moffett, the longtime financial analyst who specializes in cable. Mr. Moffett,
who heads his own firm, said that the key to Fox News’s continued financial
strength has been “the level of passion and engagement” it inspires in its
viewers.
So it makes it all so interesting to
listen to Dish Network chief Charlie Ergen accusing Fox of “extortion”
as the battle between Dish — which blacked out Fox in a disagreement over
carriage fees — enters its second week.
In a video statement posted close to midnight on Christmas Eve, Ergen says his
gripe involving Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network involves an effort by
21st Century Fox to secure a new contract for an “unrelated” channel that would
have tripled the rates paid by Dish for that channel. It’s not exactly clear
which unrelated channel Dish is referring to, but it appears to be either FXX
or Fox Sports 1, both of which were introduced to the public fairly
recently…hence Fox’s attempt to include them (via bundling) at the negotiation
table.
“Ironically, Fox News would be the
first network to decry this kind of dealmaking,” Ergen said. “There’s nothing
about this extortion attempt that was fair or balanced.”
As expected, Fox News responded
promptly, pointing out the inordinately large number of carriage fights that
Dish has been engaged in over the past year, including blackouts targeting CBS
and Turner.
“Since Dish dropped Fox News, Dish
has focused on shifting blame instead of getting Fox News back on the air. But
the facts speak for themselves – Dish has blocked more than 10 channels in the
last six months alone,” said the network statement. “We continue to work on
resolving this situation, but until Dish is responsive, we are unable to update
you on when Fox News will be available.”
Consequently, Fox’s fan base has
besieged Dish with calls and emails since the channel went dark. By Fox’s
tally, about 180,000 complaint calls have been registered with the toll-free
line Fox established for the Dish fight. At last count, 140,000-plus emails
have been sent as well.
From here, the “extortion” angle
Dish is attempting here to play is a losing proposition. Apparently Dish and
its CEO (Ergen) are either not aware or chooses to willfully ignore the concept
of leverage. Bottom line: Fox holds a straight flush here based on the
size and loyalty of its audience alone. Dish–which is a distant second to its
primary competitor (DirecTV)–only holds a pair of threes.
Extortion — using Ergen’s
characterization — should never be confused with the basic concept of supply
and demand.
And when the smoke clears, expect
Dish to be eating off of a dish, with crow being the main course.
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