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Dish Network adds subscribers for first time in 15 months

August 10th, 2009, 2:12 pm by

Dish Network logoDish Network’s turn today to fill us in on its health: It grew for the first time in 15 months.

The company, which admitted to poor customer service last quarter, either made good on its efforts to improve service or offered some hard-to-beat promotions.

Judging from its financial results — net income dropped to $63 million in the second quarter, compared to $336 million a year ago — I’d say the latter. Revenues fell just a tad, 0.4 percent, to $2.9 billion. The company also cited “new sales and marketing initiatives” as a contributing factor to its growth.

Dish spent a cringe-worthy$708 per subscriber on its “subscriber acquisition cost,” up from last year’s $699 per subscriber. At least the company is making more money per customer: $70.73 this year versus $69.38 last year.

During the quarter, Dish added 26,000 net subscribers, ending with 13.610 million subscribers on June 30. As mentioned in its regulatory filing, this was the first time in five quarters that the company added a net number of subscribers. Still, for the year, its total subscriber base is down 68,000 subscribers from the prior year.

The company blamed economic conditions, the end of its partnership with AT&T and competition from Internet-based TV services.

However, Dish’s growth continues the trend that is seeing Internet and satellite TV companies grow while cable TV companies are losing customers. Here are links to second quarter 2009 earnings reports from TV services available in Orange County:

Recent TV news:


Check out the Gadgetress Guide to local TV services

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DirecTV made $83.16 per customer as subscribership grows

August 6th, 2009, 8:05 am by

DirecTV DirecTV is on a roll. It continued to add new subscribers during its second quarter, thanks to a partnership to bundle TV service with AT&T phone and Internet service.

During the quarter, it added a net 224,000 subscribers, which brings its total customer base to 18.3 million. That’s only half of the 460,000 the satellite TV service added during its first quarter this year, but any growth is much better than the declines the cable companies are experiencing.

By comparison, Time Warner Cable lost 11,000 subscribers in its most recent quarter and Comcast’s subscribers dropped 2.7 percent or 214,000 (Cox is a private company and doesn’t report quarterly numbers). The much smaller Internet-based TV services grew the most: Verizon FiOS added 300,000 TV customers to total 2.5 million, and AT&T U-verse TV added 248,000 subscribers for a total of 1.6 million.

Overall, DirecTV said it made less money during the quarter than the prior year, with net income falling 11 percent from last year to $407 million. At the same time, revenues increased 9 percent to $5.22 billion. The company blamed declines on higher interest expenses and unfavorable exchange rates in Latin American. But sales grew thanks to its partnership with AT&T.

The average customer bill also jumped up 1.7 percent to $83.16, thanks to higher HD and DVR service fees that offset discounts for new and existing customers. Even so, its customers are cutting back in some areas: DirecTV made less money from premium movies. 

For more details, see DirecTV’s press release or listen in to the 11 a.m. conference call at this link.

More TV news:


Check out the Gadgetress Guide to local TV services

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 15 Comments »

Time Warner Cable losing basic, premium subscribers

July 29th, 2009, 9:04 am by

Time Warner CableOur favorite cable TV company released its second-quarter earnings report this morning and its CEO is pleased.

Time Warner Cable continued to make more money, netting income of $316 million in the three months, ending June 30. In the same time last year, it made $277 million. Sales also grew 4 percent, or $176 billion, to $4.5 billion in the three months.

Nearly every segment of Time Warner grew — subscriptions were up 6 percent to $4.3 billion, video revenues grew 3 percent to $2.7 billion, Internet revenues were up 9 percent to $1.1 billion, and digital phone revenues were up 19 percent to $471 million.

The only areas that declined were basic and premium video subscribers and advertising, which was down a hefty 25 percent to $174 million. (And no wonder! One premium channel is $15 a month. And if you order all five premiums, that adds $53 to your monthly bill.)

If you’re scowling at this report because your cable bill went up this year, Time Warner said that its costs have risen, too. Video programming expenses, which include the per-subscriber fees paid to TV networks for the right to broadcast their channels, jumped 7 percent to $1 billion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • | 22 Comments »

Average Verizon FiOS bill is $135; TV service still growing

July 27th, 2009, 8:20 am by

Verizon FiOSIt’s earnings time and the little factoids we glean from the  TV companies’ reports are whether they grew, didn’t grow, and by how much.

Verizon, which reported this morning, said its FiOS TV and Internet service grew. Surprised? Well, here in certain parts of Orange County, the company’s roll out of its fiber-optic TV and Internet service seemed to be at a standstill (see the earlier, “Verizon’s FiOS TV rollout slows in So Cal“). Verizon confirmed that much, although its take on slow down was that we here in O.C. were among the first and fastest to get the FiOS services. Growth efforts are now being concentrated elsewhere.

The company added 300,000 net new FiOS TV customers and 303,000 net new FiOS Internet customers. That brings FiOS numbers to 2.5 million TV users, up 82.1 percent from a year ago,  and 3.1 million Internet users, up 51 percent from a year ago.

While the service has taken a long time to get up and running, FiOS is definitely a way for Verizon to boost revenues. The average customer bill was $135, or nearly double the average Verizon customer.

Verizon FiOS grew in the second quarter 2009.The other interesting note in Verizon’s second-quarter earnings report is sales penetration, which is how many households in an area that can order FiOS actually do. In areas with FiOS Internet, penetration rates were at 28.1 percent by end of June, compared to 23.5 percent a year ago. Overall, 11 million premises can order FiOS Internet.

As for TV penetration, rates jumped to 24.6 percent, compared to 19.7 percent a year ago. Overall, 10.3 million premises can order FiOS TV.

Verizon began offering FiOS TV and Internet to 650,000 new homes during the second quarter for a total of 13.8 million premises or 43 percent of its wireline customer base.

With numbers in the 20 percent to 30 percent, the majority of residents are still opting for a different TV service. It may be hard for some FiOS lovers to understand why. Since FiOS gets to homes via fiber optic cables, the company can offer more channels and uncompressed high-definition video. Its Internet service offers upload speeds of up to 20 megabits per second and download speeds of 50 mbps.

Verizon believes that when it unveils new FiOS neighborhoods, the competing cable TV company scours neighborhoods offering better deals to keep customers from switching. Hence, instead of expanding, Verizon is concentrating on areas where FiOS service is available, like Seal Beach, to get penetration rates higher.

While FiOS is taking off, older technologies are in decline. FiOS helped offset Verizon’s losses in the DSL Internet users, which fell by 117,000 customers during the quarter. But that is apparently not enough to save its older wireless business. Bloomberg News is reporting that the company plans to cut 8,000 jobs in its wireless division by the end of the year.

More TV earnings news:


Check out the Gadgetress Guide to local TV services

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 6 Comments »

4 million people trust Time Warner Cable with phone service

June 29th, 2009, 11:39 am by

Time Warner CableTime Warner Cable’s strategy to get customers to sign up for a bundle of services appears to be paying off — 4 million customers order digital phone service from the cable TV company.

The company, which announced Monday that it signed up its 4 millionth residential phone customer, has been in the telephone business since at least 2003, or a few years longer than telecom rivals Verizon and AT&T have offered TV service.

Its phone service alone costs $44.95/month, which includes unlimited nationwide long distance. But for $55 more per month, customers also get cable TV service and high-speed Internet.

Buying the service bundled seems like a better deal, not to mention everything is packaged in one convenient bill. That’s the thinking Time Warner and others are using to lure customers. For Time Warner, bundled services are such a huge push that they were highlighted in the company’s last earnings report (read the earlier, “Time Warner Cable makes $184 million, gains subscribers“). Time Warner credited gains to the growth of 60,000 customers for its double-play bundle and 146,000 customers for the triple-play pack.

There has been some discontent with Time Warner’s phone service, such as the L.A. Times story on Sunday about Time Warner charging $0.99 to customers wishing to remain unlisted in a public phone directory (this is new?). But I haven’t heard too many complaints from readers about Time Warner’s phone service (I’m listening…). And according to customer-satisfaction analysts at J.D. Power and Associates, Time Warner is, well, not the worst telephone provider out there.

In last year’s telephone service provider rankings, J.D. Power’s didn’t include Time Warner in its Western roundup (where Cox beat out AT&T and Verizon). But in the south, Time Warner was in a four-way tie for the lowest ranked service overall, scoring 2 out of 5. Time Warner did slightly better in the North Central region of the United States and ranked the second highest on the East Coast.

Recent Time Warner Cable news:


Check out the Gadgetress Guide to local TV services.  

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • | 4 Comments »

The FiOS report: Where is FiOS in Seal Beach?

May 18th, 2009, 9:30 am by

Verizon FiOS

UPDATE, 5/20, 2009: Seal Beach city engineer Michael Ho clarifies that the number he gave of completed FiOS construction is only related to certain neighborhoods. I’ve written a whole new post about it: “UPDATE: Verizon FiOS in one-third of Seal Beach.“

Welcome to The FiOS report. Readers area clamoring for alternatives to their current TV service and Verizon FiOS is one of two new services that offer this. But where can you find it? This is the first in an occasional series investigating exactly where FiOS TV is offered in Orange County cities.

Verizon’s FiOS TV service began targeting Seal Beach since late last fall (see “FiOS TV coming to Seal Beach“) and planned to reach 5,000 homes by the end of March.

But I’m still getting complaints from readers in certain neighborhoods that FiOS is MIA. Here’s the update:

According to Michael Ho, city engineer for the city of 25,000, Verizon has “pretty much installed FiOS in about 80 percent of the residential areas of town.” (CLARIFICATION on May 20: Ho meant 80 percent in certain neighborhoods. Read the update: “UPDATE: Verizon FiOS in one-third of Seal Beach.”

Key areas with FiOS are Old Seal Beach, Bridgeport and pretty much anywhere near Pacific Coast Highway.

Where is Verizon FiOS in Seal Beach? As of May 2009...The remaining portion that won’t be getting FiOS just yet is the neighborhood of College Park East, the area just north of Interstate 405 with about 1,700 homes; most of the Leisure World community (around 9,000 people); and, believes Ho, new tract homes and navy housing. (Click map image to enlarge)

That doesn’t sound like 80 percent to me…  Why the FiOS snub? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • | 4 Comments »

Verizon’s FiOS TV rollout slows in So Cal

May 13th, 2009, 4:58 pm by

Verizon FiOS rollout slowing down for SoCal? Yikes!Verizon confirmed today that it has slowed expansion of its much sought-after FiOS TV service in Southern California to focus on adding customers where service is already available.

“We started in 2004 and have been really aggressive at getting fiber out there. But in order to get the return on our investment we need to focus on areas that we’ve already built,” said Jon Davies, a spokesman for Verizon FiOS.  ”We slowed down the build and really did a lot of direct marketing and door-to-door to get those customers to sign up.”

Davies says FiOS TV is still expanding in our area, just not as fast as planned. I guess that means if you’re getting FiOS sales people knocking on your door, you are still on the list to get service soon.

In Orange County, FiOS is in certain parts of Brea, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Habra, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Stanton, Westminster and certain unincorporated areas.

This is a major detour from the glowing report the company gave two weeks ago to announce that FiOS service was now available to 1 million California households. Not to mention, the slowdown goes against the statement made by Eric Rabe, Verizon’s senior vice president of media relations, that Verizon is building as fast as it can.

Davies said Rabe was referring to the national rollout. This slowdown, as far as Davies knows, is specific to Southern California.

The delay has absolutely nothing to do with the economy, Davies said, despite notices like the one on the city of Walnut’s web site (and confirmed after a call to the city) saying otherwise: Read the rest of this entry »

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Dish admits to shabby service, loses customers

May 11th, 2009, 1:03 pm by

Dish Network logoDish Network Corporation lost 94,000 net subscribers in the first quarter, ended March 31, leaving 13.584 million with the satellite TV company. That’s a loss of 1.7 percent from a year ago.

But as part of a highly competitive industry, Dish is one of the few paid-TV companies that lost subscribers during the quarter. Comcast Corp., a cable TV provider on the East Coast, also lost customers. Here in Orange County, Verizon’s FiOS, AT&T’s U-verse, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable all gained customers in the first quarter.

Dish cited many of the usual reasons for the declines, including the nation’s weak economy, slowdown in paid-TV growth and competition from Internet and fiber-based TV services. But Dish also blamed some other unique events  for its losses, according to its SEC filing. 

  1. Signal theft and other forms of fraud.
  2. AT&T dumped Dish in favor of bundling DirecTV services for its phone customers.
  3. Competitors have been more successful at marketing the value and quality of their service.
  4. Admitted to not maintaining its own “high quality installations.”
  5. Also faulted itself for poor resolution of customer issues, poor communication with customers, and improving the quality of its subscriber equipment. Here’s exactly what the company said: 

“We have not always met our own standards for performing high quality installations, effectively resolving customer issues when they arise, answering customer calls in an acceptable timeframe, effectively communicating with our subscriber base, reducing calls driven by the complexity of our business, improving the reliability of certain systems and subscriber equipment, and aligning the interests of certain third party retailers and installers to provide high quality service.”

Wow, I didn’t know companies actually admitted stuff like this. 

The good news for current customers is that Dish says it is taking responsibility and spending money to fix everything. It’s upgrading customers to HD equipment, offering Slingbox’s place-shifting technology, and investing in customer service. The bad news for investors, said the company, is that these expenses will hurt margins and the company will make less money. Also, there’s no guarantee that these investments will pay off, but the company believes they will.

For the quarter, Dish reported $313 million in net income on $2.91 billion in revenues. That’s up from the same period a year earlier of $259 million income on $2.84 billion in revenues.

More from the Web on Dish Network’s finances:

More TV news:


Check out the Gadgetress Guide to local TV services 

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 9 Comments »

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