According to a recent Washington Post article, hundreds of thousands of DISH Network subscribers could lose access to shows on traditional television networks after a Supreme Court justice's decision that ends several lawsuits that have been tied up in court for more than eight years.
The Court let stand a ruling in May by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that ordered DISH Network's parent company EchoStar Communications to stop transmitting network programming to 800,000 subscribers living in mostly rural areas too far to receive local stations with regular antennas.
The decision stemmed from lawsuits filed by the Fox Network and stations affiliated with the four major networks. All the suits claimed that EchoStar illegally offers distant-network signals to customers who are capable of receiving television signals from nearby cities. Rural customers who live within the reach of a local television broadcast are not eligible to receive network programming from a satellite TV company, which usually offers transmissions from stations in large cities.
The ruling is a double victory for media mogul Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., which owns Fox and DirecTV Group Inc., the nation's largest satellite television company. "A decade ago, satellite TV was a boon to rural subscribers," said Craig E. Moffett, a senior analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. "Now that game has largely played out. The obvious beneficiary here is DirecTV."
The loss of 800,000 rural subscribers, about 6 percent of EchoStar's 12.5 million customers, could cost the company several million dollars in revenue.
Read more about the Court's decision in the Washington Post article EchoStar Loses Court Ruling On Some TV Transmissions.
