The situation where Fox channels are dropping by DISH Network has become a norm in the past years for the users of the service. DISH and Fox Corporation have had a bitter relationship in their negotiations and contracts hence the blackout of Fox-owned networks including Fox News, FS1, Fox Business Network, and local Fox stations from DISH. This puts DISH customers in a position where they are locked out of a bar during popular Fox shows, much less during important live events. Thus, why does this continue to transpire between DISH and Fox?
Carriage Disputes Over Fees
At its core, there is never the question of anything but money. From the position of Fox as a content provider, they would wish to be paid higher fees by Dish to broadcast their channels. However, as a content distributor, DISH avoids fee increases to pass on the expenses and cut down costs. Thus, when one carriage contract terminates, fierce bargaining as to how much DISH will contribute to Fox to gain the rights to broadcast Fox channels in its channel line-ups. Should the new financial arrangement not be possible, Fox will pull its channel from DISH until they come to a resolution. Fox employs the threat of essentialization of their channels with the belief that the loss of the channels will hurt DISH and therefore they will be forced to accept the fees that Fox is offering. DISH therefore holds out to avoid even higher costs being passed down to their clientele through exorbitant subscription rates. This fierce financial struggle is why Dish customers ephemerally have their Fox programming ripped out for days, weeks, or even months.
Industry Changes Intensify Negotiations
What makes these Fox carriage disputes especially contentious is that the TV industry has transformed quite a lot recently. This has made programming costs expensive across the board thus eroding the profit margins of the distributors such as DISH. But media consolidation for some reason has also provided more clout to the large programmers like Fox Corp that have more of the key channels under one ownership. Thus, carriers have needed Fox channels even more, enabling Fox to ask for even higher payments. This immense pressure on both sides is the reason why negotiations tend to fail and break down most of the time over a disagreement on the price of the product.
Impact on DISH Customers
Alas, the consumers, specifically those who are DISH subscribers, are the ones who are most affected by these long financial disputes between two huge companies. These customers get angry and disappointed when they cannot watch live sports on FS1 or news on Fox News or local Fox stations when these channels are promised in a package. The blackouts always provoke a flood of complaints – interesting programs are gone for weeks. DISH is criticized for not taking care of its subscribers while Fox capitalizes on discontented customers against DISH. This general public frustration often forces one side to give in. Of course, compromise means DISH has to pay up while they may try to recover some of the amount in the future by gradually increasing customer prices.
Topping all these is the fact that social media elicits more pressure on the public.
To borrow a phrase from the era of social media activism, Fox has enlisted escalating public resentment against DISH. The hosts of Fox News rant over DISH for stripping the viewers of ‘essential’ news and opinion shows. Fox patriotically pushes for the use of Twitter hashtags such as #DISHlacksBlackouts as a means of encouraging the public to launch an assault on DISH. The PR campaign to paint DISH as a company anti-consumer has driven DISH back to the negotiating table time and again at worse terms for it than those offered by Fox. While DISH may initially reject the price hikes to shield their customers from such expensive rates, the chaos created by Fox's PR attack at some point shifts customer attrition pressures enough to force DISH to succumb to Fox’s increased financial demands.
This is a situation that does not seem to be coming to an ending anytime soon Meaning of Standoffs The term standoff generally refers to a state of confrontation where two or more parties are engaged in a contest especially involving opposing camps.
Sadly, for DISH subscribers, the tendency of Fox carriage disputes leading to channel blackouts remains constant, and therefore, it does not appear that it will disappear in the future. In the current TV ecosystem, Fox Corp has so much negotiating power with must-have sports and entertainment that it cannot afford to relent in its quest for higher and higher content licensing fees from carriers like DISH every year. Until the dissatisfaction of consumers over channel blackout leads to a regulatory change that may lead to governmental intervention in the program access rules governing these wars, DISH will continue to switch between gradually escalating content prices and cancelations by unhappy customers who shift to other providers. As the challenges rise on both fronts for DISH and other TV providers, more Fox disruption troubles to customers are on the cards. It will take strong leadership and innovative ideas from all sides to change a system that rewards negativity and blame games instead of win-win negotiations.
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