AMC Networks To Stream ‘Breaking Bad’ Premiere For Dish Network Customers

COMMENTS (16)

• Brilliant marketing strategy. This should make for an interesting case study in business school.

  Comment by Oppenheimer — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 12:20pm EDT  Reply to this post

• Dish has agreed to reimburse it’s customers the cost of viewing any and all AMC programs regardless of the method used. I’ll be ordering the entire new season of Breaking Bad from iTunes. It is cheaper for Dish to do this than pay AMC the outrageous fees it is asking for.

  Comment by Ari Ben Sion — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 12:31pm EDT  Reply to this post

  • No this is not cheaper, Dish has about 15 million subscribers, they have to would have to pay $2 a week, for all the shows people are watching, that’s 90 million dollars a month, 360 million dollars a year. While Dish would have to pay $2.50 per subscriber a month, tops.

    Comment by Tvaddic — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 3:16pm EDT  Reply to this post

    • According to this, Dish pays 26 cents per sub per month and wants to (eventually) get up to about 75 cents. Even if they add an additional quarter this year, it doesn’t take a whole lot of people getting $2 reimbursements each week to justify passing that extra quarter each month along to me.

      Comment by Matt Youngblut — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 4:15pm EDT  Reply to this post

    • Dish claim that only one million of it’s subscribers ever watch AMC. Plug that into your formula and it will explain why Dish dropped AMC.

      AMC is being greedy. Not only does it sell it’s programs to many others, it has commercials!!

      Comment by Ari be Simon — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 7:52pm EDT  Reply to this post

      • Dish does not have the ability to track it’s customers viewing habits. Only Nielson homes can be tracked, otherwise they would be invading their customers privacy. Also, Dish has no intention of reinstating AMC. This is all about the Voom HD lawsuit.

        Comment by thephantomcat — Friday July 13, 2012 @ 3:26am EDT  Reply to this post

        • Virtually every Dish receiver is connected via phone or broadband and calls ‘home’ every night.

          They do indeed know how many of their customers watch any show.

          Comment by eddie willers — Saturday July 14, 2012 @ 12:33am EDT  

  • You need to factor in customer aggravation at the inconvenience at having to go get a show from a different and unfamiliar source instead of just hitting a button on the zapper, as per usual. Some may suspect the whole thing is a scam on Dish’s part, to get them to sign up for iTunes.

    Customer ire will descend on Dish, regardless of who is “at fault,” because Dish, not AMC, is the one who interfaces with customers. Something similar happened not so long ago to Netflix – they took all the heat for something that was not actually their fault. (But they seem to have rebounded nicely now.)

    Comment by scififan — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 6:58pm EDT  Reply to this post

    • “Something similar happened not so long ago to Netflix – they took all the heat for something that was not actually their fault. “

      Attempting to almost double their price was not their fault?!

      Comment by Anonymous — Saturday July 14, 2012 @ 12:36am EDT  Reply to this post

      • That is correct.

        Netflix was passing the cost of doing business on renegotiated contracts, in which the content creators were trying to squeeze Netflix out of the game.

        The fact that you don’t know this only reinforces scififan’s point: the last link in the distribution chain gets blamed for the situation, even if they’re not at fault.

        Dish would do well to watch its step. A few more events like this one, and content creators will simply start distributing at the source and Dish will become irrelevant. Frankly I don’t know why AMC doesn’t already distribute all their content locally: with the number of commercials they aired in the BB premiere (and no way to circumvent them), I’m hard-pressed to believe it wasn’t profitable.

        Comment by MikeyZ — Friday July 20, 2012 @ 4:55pm EDT  Reply to this post

• Until their subscribers, who they gave free roku devices to, decide that cutting the cord really isn’t a bad idea at all.

  It doesn’t really make much sense to provide people with the means and incentives to cut you out of the loop.

  Comment by Anonymous — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 1:26pm EDT  Reply to this post

• Very interesting strategy indeed. This will help AMC save face with the end-user and give them quantifiable data about how many Dish customers really want their network. If its a low number, AMC might cave easier, but if it’s a high number it could give them serious negotiating leverage.

  Any word if these numbers will be made public?

  Comment by former financial services guy — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 3:09pm EDT  Reply to this post

• Can we stop our service and avoid penalties when satellite and cable companies drop channels like this — directive just dropped 26 viacom channels in their dispute. Who is in the right here, the networks or the cable/satellite providers?

  Comment by jake — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 3:18pm EDT  Reply to this post

  • Seems to me that if 26 channels drop off your line up then they aren’t honoring the deal you signed up for.

    Comment by woodrow — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 4:16pm EDT  Reply to this post

• DirectTV Customer Agreement: “Our Programming Changes. Many factors affect the availability, cost and quality of programming and may influence the decision to raise prices and the amount of any increase. These include, among others, programming and other costs, consumer demand, market and shareholder expectations, and changing business conditions. Accordingly, we must reserve the unrestricted right to change, rearrange, add or delete our programming packages, the selections in those packages, our prices, and any other Service we offer, at any time. We will endeavor to notify you of any change that is within our reasonable control and its effective date. In most cases this notice will be about one month in advance. You always have the right to cancel your Service, in whole or in part, if you do not accept the change (see Section 5). If you cancel your Service, a deactivation fee (described in Sections 2 & 5(b)) or other charges may apply. Credits, if any, to your account will be posted as described in Section 5. If you do not cancel, your continued receipt of our Service will constitute acceptance.”

  Comment by olsen — Thursday July 12, 2012 @ 4:34pm EDT  Reply to this post

• Directv settled already. Got all the channels back. I hate Dish. They treat you like crap! I was a costumer of theirs for 20 yrs. They dont care about that tho. I still dont know why I stayed with them that long. Just switched when they took AMC away.

  Comment by marti — Sunday July 22, 2012 @ 6:43pm EDT  Reply to this post