The chairman of Dish Networks toned down some of his recent rhetoric against broadcasters on today’s earnings call, and said he is in favor of a subscriber-advertising model for TV. Read more at paidContent »
Sprint is juggling its two competing buyout offers. It’s appointed a special committee to evaluate Dish’s proposal on one hand, but it’s not delaying its wedding date with SoftBank on the other. Read more »
Google is partnering with the U.K. satellite-TV box Freesat to offer an HTML5 YouTube channel. Freesat, which is backed by the BBC and ITV, is a set-top satellite TV box that offers 180 channels and doesn’t require a monthly subscriptin. Read more at paidContent »
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mark Phillip wants to save cable television, kind of. He really wants to make life easier for sports fanatics like himself, but in doing so has created something he thinks could save cable and satellite from the cord-cutting craze. The secret to his possible success: data. Read more »
Report after report points to AT&T marrying Dish Network after Ma Bell’s forced break up with T-Mobile, but given the companies’ increasing belligerence, you wouldn’t think that was the case. What we’re witnessing here is some very cynical pre-nuptial gamesmanship. Read more »
Could Apple spend its $100 billion in cash to create a virtual cable operator to compete with Comcast and the like? Sure. But it would have a really hard time offering a competitively priced service and building a profitable business out of it. Read more »
The latest evidence that the set-top box will soon be dead comes from Samsung and DirecTV, which have partnered. Set-top boxless viewing will enable operators to provide the same user interface on the TV without the need for another piece of hardware. Read more »
Dish first announced its Blockbuster subscription streaming service three months ago. In that time, it’s been quietly ramping up the amount of content its subscribers can access through the service, boosting the number of choices from just 4,000 streaming titles at launch to more than 25,000 now. Read more »
Dish is betting big on the DVR to help it win over more customers and fight off competition. The satellite TV provider is coming out with new and improved recording devices that can be taken advantage of from up to four TVs throughout the home. Read more »
Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett issued a research note that paints a damning picture of cable affordability in light of larger macroeconomic trends. Many U.S. households have less money for discretionary spending at the same time that the price of TV entertainment has risen dramatically. Read more »
