Dish Network reports loss of 273,000 subscribers through end of 2021

Dish Network, one of the latest companies in the pay-TV space to report results for the fourth quarter of 2021, said Thursday it lost another 273,000 net pay-TV subscribers in the quarter.

This compares to 133,000 lost during the same period in 2020. The company now has 10.71 million pay-TV subscribers, including 8.22 million to the main Dish TV service and an additional 2.49 million to Sling TV. The Streamable said Sling TV lost around 70,000 subscribers between the third and fourth quarters of last year. The company raised prices for new Sling subscribers in early January, but that was after the end of the fourth quarter.

Overall, the company posted revenue of $4.45 billion for the quarter, compared to $4.56 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. The company also reported a profit of $552 million, compared to $733 million in the fourth quarter of 2020.

According to Marketwatch, the company matched analyst consensus with its revenue performance in the quarter.

The New York Post reported in January that Dish Network and DIRECTV were once again in merger talks. The two companies have come close to merging more than once in the past, and Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen has called such a combination “inevitable”. When AT&T was trying to build DIRECTV in 2020 and 2021, Dish Network wasn’t seriously involved in the bidding, in part because the Trump administration made it clear that such a combination would struggle to get the job done. regulatory approval.

DIRECTV was eventually spun off into a separate company in which AT&T still holds a majority stake. TPG Capital, which controls the rest of the company, would push the merger, the Post said.

However, according to the Post report, the parties are now less concerned about the antitrust aspect, with a different administration in power and advances in 5G technology, which makes it less worrying that a single company has a monopoly on broadband. in rural areas.

“They’re getting together because it just makes sense,” a source “close to the deal” told The Post in January. .”

DIRECTV, now that it is an independent company, no longer publishes quarterly subscriber figures. The Post reported its subscriber count at just over 15 million at the end of last year.

Stephen Silver, technology editor for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who also contributes to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and connect today. Co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Picture: Reuters.