Dish’s washed
The share price of Dish Network Corporation, the second-biggest satellite TV provider in the US, hit its lowest level since 1999 this week, dropping some 9.4% as analysts continue to downgrade target prices for the stock.
This 24-year low point compounds a rough start to the year for Dish after a ransomware attack in February saw data stolen, employees locked out of internal systems, and Dish customers facing issues for weeks after.
Satellite struggles
Over the past 10 years, Americans have been cord-cutting like never before, ditching the traditional methods of consuming TV and moving increasingly online, a trend that’s hit satellite TV hard. The rapidly-waning number of functional satellites in the sky only adds to Dish’s issues — with neither Dish nor its largest competitor DirecTV looking to replace the deteriorating fleets, CEO Charlie Ergen has described a merger between the two as “inevitable” for years.
Over the past 4 years, Dish’s total Pay-TV subscriber count has fallen in every quarter but 3 and is down some 26% from the start of 2018. While it’s perhaps understandable that satelliteDish TV subscribers have fallen more than 30% in this period, it’s more concerning for the company that its streaming service, Sling TV, has never really taken off in that time frame either, with ~8k fewer subscribers at the end of 2022 compared to the final quarter of 2018.
