Dish Network Explores Offering Satellite TV for PC Reports SatelliteTVForPC.net

San Francisco, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/29/2012 -- Dish Network wants to offer Internet streaming with live shows but programmers are balking, the satellite TV company says.

Television networks will not give online rights to their live shows, and talks have failed because the price they demand is too high for the service to be viable, Dish Chief Executive Officer Joseph Clayton said this week.

Dish Network, the second-largest provider of satellite television in the United States, has been looking at introducing a separate streaming product or “over-the-top” service. Clayton said there is a market for alternatives to traditional television services, especially among younger viewers. “There’s a group of consumers, mostly around age 18 to 28, that aren’t going to watch 250 channels of TV, pay $100 a month and watch it on a 60-inch flat-panel display,” he said. “Maybe they’ll spend $20.”

But programmers are concerned about losing subscription fees from pay-TV customers and advertising revenue, says Vijay Jayant, an ISI Group analyst in New York. Clayton acknowledged that a streaming product could not be done in such a way that hurt current service for Dish Network, which is based in Englewood, Colorado.

Satellite and cable companies must pay for a number of channels if they want to provide the most popular ones, Jayant noted, and they are not eager to unbundle their packages for an online offering. “Programmers want to maximize the value of their copyrighted content,” said Jayant. And content providers see little to gain from over-the-top service. Internet streaming does not “improve the consumer experience,” says Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Viacom Time Warner, one of the largest content providers.

Clayton noted that Dish Network already offers Internet streaming in countries outside the United States. It could add digital movies from the Blockbuster video chain, which the company owns, he said.

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