Dish and DirecTV Planning to Merge

[47of74]

Saw this today

Quote

DirecTV announced Monday it’s buying rival Dish Network, ending multiple decades of on-and-off talks about the satellite services merging.

The companies have struggled to retain subscribers in the streaming era. As platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon’s Prime Video have gained traction, peeling millions of subscribers away from pay TV with lower price tags and on-demand content, DirecTV and Dish have found it increasingly difficult to justify rising subscription costs, worsening already dramatic cord-cutting.

The companies said the “combination of DirecTV and Dish will benefit US video consumers by creating a more robust competitive force in a video industry dominated by streaming services owned by large tech companies and programmers.”

If they combine, the new service would have about 20 million subscribers with DirecTV accounting for over 11 million of that number. Yet this figure pales compared to DirecTV’s 20.3 million peak TV subscriber base in 2015 when AT&T bought a majority stake in the company.

The government blocked mergers between the two companies on competitive grounds before because previously satellite was the only way for rural, small town, and some suburban areas to access cable channels.  My parents had satellite for about 20 years before we had put in fiber internet.  Once that was done they pulled out the satellite and now use streaming services for TV.