Dish lost a ton of subscribers (281,000, to be exact) in the second quarter of 2016, and Chairman Charlie Ergen is trying to make sense of it all — or at least explain it away to the market.
Some of that record-breaking decline is simply cord-cutting, for sure. Another explanation could be a not-unpopular move away from satellite TV companies in general.
But then there’s a third reason: the current Dish blackouts of popular channels like the NFL Network, NFL RedZone, and Tribune Media’s WGN America.
“Subscriber impact of any kind of takedown of popular channels is never positive,” Ergen began on a Thursday afternoon conference call.