DirecTV Terminates Deal To Buy Dish Satellite Business

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: DirecTV is pulling out of an agreement to buy its satellite rival Dish after bondholders objected to terms of the deal. DirecTV issued an announcement last night saying "it has notified EchoStar of its election to terminate, effective as of 11:59 p.m., ET on Friday, November 22nd, 2024, the Equity Purchase Agreement (EPA) pursuant to which it had agreed to acquire EchoStar's video distribution business, Dish DBS."

In the deal announced on September 30, DirecTV was going to buy the Dish satellite TV and Sling TV streaming business from EchoStar for a nominal fee of $1. DirecTV would have taken on $9.75 billion of Dish debt if the transaction moved ahead. The deal did not include the Dish Network cellular business. Dish bondholders quickly objected to terms requiring them to take a loss on the value of their debt. DirecTV had said Dish notes would be exchanged with "a reduced principal amount of DirecTV debt which will have terms and collateral that mirror DirecTV's existing secured debt." The principal amount would have been reduced by at least $1.568 billion.

DirecTV last night said it is now exercising its right to terminate the acquisition because noteholders did not accept the exchange offer. "The termination of the Agreement follows Dish DBS noteholders' failure to agree to the proposed Exchange Debt Offer Terms issued by EchoStar, which was a condition of DirecTV's obligations to acquire Dish under the EPA," the press release said. DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow indicated his company wasn't willing to change the deal to satisfy Dish bondholders. "We have terminated the transaction because the proposed Exchange Terms were necessary to protect DirecTV's balance sheet and our operational flexibility," Morrow said.

Too much competition from starlink?

[Hadlock]

I am just stunned to find out that sattelite TV companies are still in business in 2024. Who is paying for this stuff? I can't think of anyone who still has cable TV at this point let alone a big floppy thing bolted to the side of their house.

Re:

[NateTech]

Rural. Where telecom companies offer 1.5M DSL and mom and pop WISPs offer 10M.

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[erice]

Rural. Where telecom companies offer 1.5M DSL and mom and pop WISPs offer 10M.

Privileged! Where I grew up and my mother and brother still live, there is no DSL. A few years back they moved from satellite to cellular.

Re: Too much competition from starlink?

[paul_engr]

I was just offered 384k dsl by AT&T after being informed there was no gigabit fiber available at my new place. Naturally, I declined

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[luther349]

grab a Starlink issue solved.

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[alvinrod]

Starlink has completely upended that. Even some of my relatives out in the sticks have high speed internet and dropped using a satellite dish for television. I think the biggest thing stopping more people from doing the same is that they don't know about Starlink.

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[kriston]

I was a beta tester for DirecPC using the AOL online service.

We were given a satellite dish fitted with two LNB downconverters to receive both DirecTV and internet at the same time. It was receive-only, meaning the upload part went to AOL through the 56k modem and the download part was around 1 megabit.

It worked very well but was horribly expensive.

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[Pascoea]

Old people. I'm not saying that to be mean, that's just my personal observation. I don't know anyone* under 40 that still has a cable/satellite package. *The exception to that "rule" are sports nuts. Cable is the last bastion of getting all your sports fixes in the same place.

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[luther349]

i think steaming platforms sell sports packs these days as well.

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[Pascoea]

For sure you can get them, but it's a mess. NFL? If you want to watch all your teams games you need Amazon for TNF, ESPN for MNF, and to be honest I don't know what you'd need for Sunday games. If it's not on Broadcast locally it's off to the High Seas for me. Baseball? In my market I literally haven't been able to (legally) stream them for the last 2 or 3 years. Then you get into the dumb shit like not being able to stream to a TV, but you can still watch on a phone or tablet. I can't speak for NBA, NH

Re: Too much competition from starlink?

[kalpol]

You can't get an MLB.com subscription for baseball? That gets you most games with a few blackouts, and an extra fee for the postseason.

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[Pascoea]

Not for the Twins. They signed some fucked-up 10 year broadcast contract with Diamond/Bally back in in 2020. I believe in 2020/2021 you could find Bally Sports North on Hulu or Slings paid tiers, they both dropped Bally in 2022. BSN released the Bally Sports Plus app in 23 I think,but Bally and the Twins couldn't pull their heads out of each other's asses long enough to come to a direct streaming agreement. So for the 22,23,and 24 seasons: No streaming for you, unless you were a qualified sea captain. (Goi

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[luther349]

It did take forever to get my dad to drop cable TV. Now he gets streaming platforms and has far bigger and better selections.

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[bsdetector101]

Exactly. My older brother is that way. One place to go thru channels to watch, plus his internet is shit. Rural area which fiberoptic will NEVER be brought to. I also live in rural area and better faster DSL than him. But I cut the cord over 15 years ago and stream for free w/o ads for all I watch including "sports" which was the key to cutting.

Re: Too much competition from starlink?

[SeaFox]

I am just stunned to find out that sattelite TV companies are still in business in 2024.

Didn't underestimate the population of Boomers out there who never learned technology. My father lost access to the cable TV that had previously been included in his rent for his apartment. He told me he misses it because he's become quite a news junky. He doesn't know anything about streaming services and doesn't want to learn when i told him there are free ones. He gets free Internet access and owns a smartphone, but doesn't know how to use it really beyond making calls, texts, and reading (but not replyi

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[ihavesaxwithcollies]

You really want to use a tiny minority of the boomer population to prove that the majority aren't technologically deficient?

Bondholders are going to force bankruptcy?

[laughingskeptic]

In the very near term Dish is facing bankruptcy and if that happens, the bond holders are going to be lucky to get 25% of their face value, but they just turned down a deal that would have given them 86%. However Charlie Ergen screwed the bondholders with an accounting maneuver in January. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/... [axios.com] So maybe the bondholders are betting that if they can get this into court sooner than later then they can fight to undo the January maneuver? There has to be more to this story because as the article is written, the decision by the bondholders makes no sense.

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[luther349]

No golden parachute for the executives and shareholders.

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[WarlockD]

Maybe fears the FTC would delay any kind of buy out because of monopoly concerns? I seem to remember it was a big deal just 10 years ago? The only thing I can think of is that they think they would never get paid even after the buyout. Like maybe DirectTV isn't doing as well as they say.

Nobody wants DirecTV either

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Legacy media is going the way of the shopping mall, the piano tuner, and the ice merchant. Even Comcast doesn't want MSNBC. And no one wants Comcast/Xfinity or AT&T because they suck, but found niches like mobile phones and cable ISPs.

So now the only option is slow death for both

[hwstar]

Linear TV is dead except for sports and news programming. It'll take some time bout both of those will be streamed eventually.

Business in a given market consolidate when the market they are in starts to decline. Take that consolidation away and they just wither on the vine.

Takes down a lot of niche channels

[will4]

Last few times I've seen cable / satellite TV and even SirusXM radio, there are not enough channels / stations to justify even subscribing.

When you eliminate the never going to watch/listen to channels and have less than 10 remaining, there's not much point in subscribing.