Sorry DISH, this isn’t a reality show. DISH revealed their first ever quarterly loss of subscribers, losing 25K subscribers in 2Q08. Seems like the competitive heat continues to rise for them. They’re losing subscribers to the competition, but also to an anemic housing sector, where slower housing starts and soaring foreclosure rates are creating a perfect storm which negatively impacts subscriber growth. It will be interesting to compare these results to DirecTV’s, since DISH cites HD competition as a reason for their decline as well. It makes their HD announcement from earlier this week all that more important. DISH will have its challenges to reverse the trend. It’s particularly scary for them because they are seen as a “value” play against their competitors. If these hard economic times don’t push subscribers to DISH over their more expensive competitors, what will?
This was bound to happen. There is only so many new subs to go around. We’re close to saturation for pay-TV. All of these new adds from other companies are mainly coming from other pay-TV providers. There are only so many subscribers to go around and too many companies chasing them. Everyone can’t win.