Dish Network doesn’t give up easily.
Remember when the Douglas County satellite TV provider launched a DVR that skipped commercials? The . , but Dish stood firm behind its award-winning technology. CBS and Dish reached that let Dish users skip commercials a week after a show’s first broadcast.
But when Dish began losing subscribers, co-founder Charlie Ergen changed direction. He embraced pay-TV’s nemesis: cord cutters.
In January, Dish unveiled Sling TV, an Internet-based live TV service for an affordable $20 a month.
Sling did away with pay-TV rules: no contracts, no set-up fees and none of those annoying annual price increases (at least not yet). With a lineup that included ESPN, Food Network and Disney, Sling offered channels that many people would have bought a la carte anyway.
By midyear, Ergen was “This is how we focus now.”
Dish wasn’t the first to offer TV shows online, although it was the first to stream so many live channels. And more competitors have jumped in since Sling’s debut, including , and even CBS with .
Meanwhile, pay TV competitor Comcast launched its : You must be a Comcast Internet customer.
While Dish’s satellite TV subscriber numbers have declined to nearly 14 million (and ), the budding new Sling is its future.
Sling subscribers in March. According to Craig Moffett, an analyst with MoffettNathanson, that number is now .
“We are well ahead of expectations,” said Sling CEO Roger Lynch.
