Filed by Echostar Communications Corporation
Pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act of 1933
and deemed filed pursuant to Rule 14a-12
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
Subject Companies: Hughes Electronics Corporation
Commission File No. 0-26035
General Motors Corporation
Commission File No. 1-00143
Date: March 8, 2002
Set forth below is a transcript of a Charlie Chat television broadcast.
In connection with the proposed transactions, General Motors Corporation (GM),
Hughes Electronics Corporation (Hughes) and EchoStar Communications Corporation
(EchoStar) intend to file relevant materials with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, including one or more Registration Statement(s) on Form S-4 that
contain a prospectus and proxy/consent solicitation statement. Because those
documents will contain important information, holders of GM $1-2/3 and GM Class
H common stock are urged to read them, if and when they become available. When
filed with the SEC, they will be available for free at the SECs website,
www.sec.gov, and GM stockholders will receive information at an appropriate time
on how to obtain transaction-related documents for free from GM. Such documents
are not currently available.
GM and its directors and executive officers, Hughes and certain of its officers,
and EchoStar and certain of its executive officers may be deemed to be
participants in GM's solicitation of proxies or consents from the holders of GM
$1-2/3 common stock and GM Class H common stock in connection with the proposed
transactions. Information regarding the participants and their interests in the
solicitation was filed pursuant to Rule 425 with the SEC by EchoStar on November
1, 2001. Investors may obtain additional information regarding the interests of
the participants by reading the prospectus and proxy/consent solicitation
statement if and when it becomes available.
This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of
an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction
in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to
registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such
jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a
prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933,
as amended.
Materials included in this document contain forward-looking statements within
the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such
forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and
other factors that could cause our actual results to be materially different
from historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements. The factors that could cause actual results of GM,
EchoStar, Hughes, or a combined EchoStar and Hughes to differ materially, many
of which are beyond the control of EchoStar, Hughes or GM include, but are not
limited to, the following: (1) the businesses of EchoStar and Hughes may not be
integrated successfully or such integration may be more difficult,
time-consuming or costly than expected; (2) expected benefits and synergies from
the combination may not be realized within the expected time frame or at all;
(3) revenues following the transaction may be lower than expected; (4) operating
costs, customer loss and business disruption including, without limitation,
difficulties in maintaining relationships with employees, customers, clients or
suppliers, may be greater than expected following the transaction; (5)
generating the incremental growth in the subscriber base of the combined company
may be more costly or difficult than expected; (6) the regulatory approvals
required for the transaction may not be obtained on the terms expected or on the
anticipated schedule; (7) the effects of legislative and regulatory changes; (8)
an inability to obtain certain retransmission consents; (9) an inability to
retain necessary authorizations from the FCC; (10) an increase in competition
from cable as a result of digital cable or otherwise, direct broadcast
satellite, other satellite system operators, and other providers of subscription
television services; (11) the introduction of new technologies and competitors
into the subscription television business; (12) changes in labor, programming,
equipment and capital costs; (13) future acquisitions, strategic partnership and
divestitures; (14) general business and economic conditions; and (15) other
risks described from time to time in periodic reports filed by EchoStar, Hughes
or GM with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are urged to consider
statements that include the words may, will, would, could, should, believes,
estimates, projects, potential, expects, plans, anticipates, intends, continues,
forecast, designed, goal, or the negative of those words or other comparable
words to be uncertain and forward-looking. This cautionary statement applies to
all forward-looking statements included in this document.
----------
CUSTOMER CHARLIE CHAT
>> You have a show?
>> They just dish it out.
>> Charlie, Jim am I on?
J. DeFranco Oh, you're on. Welcome to the Charlie Chat, what's
your question this evening?
C. Ergen Since you're on giving things away today ...
J. DeFranco Let's have a sweepstakes. We've got a caller. Andy,
are you out there?
>> Are you a little [inaudible] Jimmy? [laughter]
J. DeFranco No, no, no.
C. Ergen We'll give you a free ...
J. DeFranco That's a little expensive.
C. Ergen That's okay, this is Dish Network.
C. Ergen We're really proud of the folks that help us in the
customer service centers, they really do make our
business, they are in contact with you.
>> Hello, and welcome to the Charlie Chat, our special
opportunity to tell you what's new here at Dish
Network. We have a lot of important news to share
with you tonight, plus we want to take as many of
your live calls and e-mails as possible, so let's
begin. Here's Charlie Ergen and Jim DeFranco.
----------
J. DeFranco Welcome to the Charlie Chat. It's great to have you
joining us. We've got some programming announcements
this evening, Charlie, as well we've got some really
nice giveaways, some little special occasion. We'll
tell you about it a little bit later, but, Charlie,
there's been a lot of questions I've seen already
that have come in as well as a lot of write-ups on
the merger with DirecTV and I know you've been tied
up with that, spent a lot of time on that lately.
C. Ergen I untied myself to be on the show.
J. DeFranco That's right and so rather than you don't know what
to believe when you read the press, if you can tell
us a little bit about it, and in addition to that,
there was a big announcement last week that will be
very helpful to a lot of our smaller town, rural
folks out there that may see a benefit in getting
some local channels. Maybe you can talk a little
about that was well.
C. Ergen Well, first of all, I have the privilege tomorrow to
testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the
benefits of the merger. I think this is about the
fifteenth time that I've testified to Congress on
some kind of satellite-related issues. This is going
to be specifically the merger, so I'll give you maybe
a little insight into the kind of things that we'll
be talking about to the Senate and the Congress of
the United States.
The fact of the matter is that merger itself will
allow us, and we've made an announcement this past
week with the merger that we will be able to do local
channels in all markets of the United States, so no
matter where you live, today you may not be able to
get your local channels, except maybe
from a cable provider which means you have a very
limited choice obviously and the cable company is
basically a monopoly to those parts of America.
We have two spot beam satellites, one which we just
launched which we'll have more on, another one under
construction. DirecTV has two spot beam satellites,
one which they have launched and we've announced a
fifth spot beam satellite that we're going to build
and launch with the approval of the merger that will
when you combine those five satellites together, and
you use about a third of our orbital spectrum, and
you use the three different orbital slots that we
have, that we will be able to provide all local
channels on a single dish to the entire United
States. So that's very, very exciting for us. I know
it's probably the single most asked question we get
here at Dish Network about when can I get my local
channels, when can I get competition to cable, I
don't like their rates, I don't like their service,
we want a choice, but we don't have one. So that's
very, very exciting.
If you take a look at a map today, you see that a lot
of people just don't have access to local channels,
so the green part there is the parts of the country
that we broadcast, either us or DirecTV broadcasts
local channels today, but you can see the vast
majority of the geographic area of the United States,
some 42 million households don't have local channels
via satellite as an option, so they have a very
limited choice. Again, with the merger, we suddenly
make the entire United States green. Realize with the
merger initially we'll be able to go 100 markets
almost immediately, it'll take about 24 months to be
able to do all the markets.
The second big thing with the merger benefit is
broadband. Probably the second most asked question
that we get here is when can we get a high speed
internet access at economical rates. And obviously
we've had some niche products such as StarBand out
there in the marketplace, but people really wanted it
at the same rate that people in the cities get it, so
again, if you take a look at the map, broadband
today, the vast majority of the country in white
there doesn't have access to high speed access,
probably the vast majority in that area won't have
access to high speed access in my lifetime without
the ability to do it though satellite. With the
merger, obviously we can ... a new generation of spot
beam satellites or broadband that'll allow us to put
on a single dish broadband high speed access at the
same kind of rates that people pay for cable, our
phone company, DSL.
So basically the merger eliminates that digital
divide. That means your kids are going to have the
same access to the internet as maybe somebody in the
city, so that's very important to us at Dish Network.
I know it's important to you guys.
And then, of course, advanced services like high
definition television, interactivity, video on
demand. These are things that the merger, the
benefits that we bring with the merger. So to make a
long story short, with the merger everybody in
America will be able to get these advanced services -
broadband or local channels - one nation, one dish.
We're also willing to commit that we will do that all
at the same price, so one nation, one rate card so
that even if you live in rural America where you
might not have a cable company to chose from, you
will still get the benefit of the competition of the
big cities because we'll charge the same rates and
whether you really live in a town of five or a city
of 5 million, you get the same service at the same
price.
So that's really in a nutshell the benefits of the
merger. It's compelling, and we're very excited about
getting this on track, getting the regulatory
approval that we need to make that happen. Hopefully,
if you're really interested, if you're one of those
people that call and write us all the time, then you
certainly can have the ability to contact your
Congressman or your Senator about your feelings on
the merger, whatever those might be. And I know that
we probably make that relatively easy for you through
our internet site and hopefully they can put that up
on the screen for you at some point. If you go to our
website here I think you can probably click on your
Senator or your Congressman so that you can contact
them and let them know whatever you think about the
merger. But we're working hard here because we know
it's the right thing to make our service better, keep
our rates down and to compete with cable.
J. DeFranco So, a couple of things, Charlie, let me make sure
first, so you said locals for all Americans, I mean
this only 210 DMAs, so all across America they would,
all the customers out there would be able to get ...
C. Ergen No matter where you live, so the smallest market I
think is in Glendive, Montana, that's the smallest,
only 4,000 homes in all of Glendive, Montana, but if
you live in Glendive, Montana, with this merger,
you're going to get your local stations there or if
you live, of course, in the big cities, you already
do because that's where the economics are. But when
you put the companies together you have the spectrum,
you have the economic efficiencies and we have the
technology to be able to offer it to everybody.
J. DeFranco Wow, that's ... I mean that's amazing.
C. Ergen As you know, no matter where we go, no matter where
we go ...
J. DeFranco ... yeah, that's the number one question ...
C. Ergen ... that's always the number one question, why can't
I get my local channels. And nobody ... I don't
understand must carry laws and Grade B contours and
waivers that you have to get from networks. We can
eliminate all that. It's a great thing for your local
broadcaster because for the first time your local
broadcaster will be up on satellite. I know all the
small towns in America are extremely excited about
this. We've committed to that with this merger.
J. DeFranco Okay, let's take a look, Charlie, I think they
actually have a way we can show the website. Let's
show the link to our website and you go to EchoStar
DirecTV Merger Benefits and then you can click on
Take Action and this is how'd you be able to write a
letter to your Senator or Congressman or the FCC and
you can see ...
C. Ergen I see the Take Action up on the righthand side there.
J. DeFranco Right, and that's what came up, Take Action. Then you
click on "I'd like to write a letter" and then it'll
give you a sample. It doesn't actually ... you know,
you write your own words and so on, this just makes
it easy for you to write your letter in your own
words. Obviously we don't want to influence you on
what you might say, so you can write in there exactly
what you want to say, put your information in there.
C. Ergen I will say a lot of rural Senators and Congressmen
have early on in this process expressed some concerns
before I think they fully understood our All Channels
to All Americans plan and they've expressed some
concern, so they need to hear from you. They haven't
said they're opposed to the merger by any means, but
they certainly have expressed concerns that maybe
it's less choice for Americans. We actually think, we
think it's actually more choice for you guys out
there, particularly in rural America. And so they
want to hear from you because they ... that's the way
democracy works in terms of hearing from people, so
otherwise you may have ... you may very well have
some people who think that this isn't good for rural
America and they certainly want to hear from you
because you're the people that count, you're the
voters.
J. DeFranco I believe it was EchoStarmerger.com I think and of
course you can get a link from DishNetwork.com to get
over there. So there's the information to get to that
website.
Okay, you know we've had a lot of activity, Charlie,
lately and two weeks ago (it seems like it was just
yesterday) but two weeks ago we had another milestone
in EchoStar and the Dish Network, very exciting.
Let's take a look and share this with our customers
out there.
----------
LAUNCH FOOTAGE
>> [inaudible] systems propulsion.
>> Go.
>> Hydraulics.
>> Go.
>> Pneumatics.
>> Go.
>> O2.
>> Go.
>> Vehicle Electrical?
>> Go.
>> Late termination system?
>> Go.
>> [inaudible] utilization.
>> Go.
>> [inaudible] systems, propulsion.
>> Go.
>> Hydraulics.
>> Go.
>> Pneumatics.
>> Go.
>> LO2.
>> Go.
>> LH2.
>> Go.
>> Vehicle electrical.
>> Go.
>> Light control.
>> Go.
>> PCLS monitor.
>> Go.
>> Flight termination system.
>> Go.
>> Telemetry.
>> Go.
>> RF.
>> Go.
>> Complex systems, instrumentation.
>> Go.
>> Vox control.
>> Go.
>> Environmental control.
>> Go.
>> Booms.
>> Go.
>> Monitor.
>> Go.
>> Water.
>> Go.
>> Complex electric.
>> Go.
>> Dial and monitor vehicle loads.
>> Go.
>> Easy control.
>> Go.
>> Operations safety manager.
>> Go.
>> Sequencer.
>> Go.
>> Range weather and final clear to launch.
>> Go.
>> This is Atlas Mission Control at T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Atlas
engine ignition, 1, zero and liftoff for the maiden flight of the
Lockheed-Martin Atlas 3B Rocket with the EchoStar VII spacecraft onboard for
EchoStar Communications, Littleton, Colorado. With this Atlas flight underway,
let's listen to Ralph Gannon providing the launch vehicle ascent data.
----------
C. Ergen That was, as I said, this is the seventh of our
satellite launches. This is our new rocket, made by
Lockheed-Martin, the first maiden voyage of that so
that was kind of a first for us, to be first on a
rocket and more importantly that it was successful.
J. DeFranco Well, we've been first before, but ...
C. Ergen I think the key is what does this mean for our
customers. It means that we continue to invest in our
business. Typically when you send in your monthly
payment, your monthly programming payment, we
actually take that money and spend more on top of
that, launching these satellites. It's going to give
us, it's going to replace one of our satellites in
outer space that had some solar panel damage,
EchoStar IV. It's going to have some spot beams on
it. It's the first of our spot beam satellites so
that we can do more local cities. We're going to
start with Alaska and Hawaii and some added service
to Alaska and Hawaii and those are folks that, you
know, have been left out of many of the things that
have happened in telecommunications and we're going
to be able to provide them their local cities. Maybe
a couple of other local cities as well as we move
things around and then with our transponders, of
course, gives us additional back-up in outer space.
So you can feel secure in watching our channels and
we want to be able to add a few channels on the
satellite system as well. It won't be operational
until some time probably in late April. We're just
now getting the satellite into a geosynchronous slot,
then we've got some deployments to do and then we've
got a lot of testing to do because this is a pretty
complicated satellite.
So that was exciting. So a back-up for Echo IV but in
addition to that, folks in Alaska and Hawaii will see
a benefit once this goes into service.
Actually they'll see their local Anchorage channels
or local Honolulu channels and some additional
channels that they haven't been able to receive
before, so we made a big investment and continue to
make an investment. Our next launch is EchoStar VIII
and that's going to be launched some time early this
summer from Kazakhstan, and again, when EchoStar VII
and VIII both are operational, that will allow us to
do maybe a dozen more or maybe even a few more local
channels that we don't, local cities that we don't do
today and again, additional, national coverage and
things.
J. DeFranco Okay, okay, another milestone. Again, just ...
C. Ergen Well, you know, we signed, I think in 1994 or 1993,
we signed a contract for seven ...
J. DeFranco Oh, that's right, I forgot about that.
C. Ergen We didn't have any money, but we signed a contract
for seven satellites and seven launches and it took
us almost nine years to do it, but we're able to do
it. And we've actually launched one satellite for
each and every year, the last
seven years we've launched a satellite. This year
we're launching two, or three. Actually we're
launching three this year.
J. DeFranco So there's another seven in our, in our milestones.
We just recently passed the milestone of 7 million
customers. So I want to thank all of you obviously
for supporting us. Charlie's going to talk a little
later in this show about a Club Dish program that
we've talked about before and really it is our
existing customers out there that by word of mouth
are satisfied and tell their friends and neighbors
and relatives about it and we certainly want to thank
you for helping us reach that milestone.
C. Ergen Right. It seems like only yesterday we were ... the
first customer, in fact, what day is today? Actually
it was seven years to the day, I know it was March
4th.
J. DeFranco Is that right?
C. Ergen Seven years to the day that we got our first paying
customer. Today, because today's March 4th, so seven
years to the day. So you know, my kid's birthday's
six years.
J. DeFranco Six years.
C. Ergen Six years to the day.
J. DeFranco I knew there was something fishy about it. We're
starting out seventh year, but it was, yeah, that's
right.
C. Ergen Six years.
J. DeFranco Six years.
C. Ergen Six years ago.
J. DeFranco Great. So we've got, let's see we've got our ...
C. Ergen No, seven, seventh, seventh launch.
J. DeFranco Seventh launch.
C. Ergen Seventh year.
J. DeFranco Starting our seventh year, 7 million customers. I
think we ought to give something away. What do you
think?
C. Ergen Well that was prearranged. Alright, what do you want
to give away?
J. DeFranco Well, speaking of sevens ... We have a lot of
customers our there that may have not, may not have
our Everything Pak. How about if we stick with the
seven ... by the way, before we have another seven,
we have three sevens, 7, 7, 7, that's 21 right?
C. Ergen Right.
J. DeFranco 21 years since we started EchoStar.
C. Ergen That's right, it's actually our 22nd year.
J. DeFranco We're in our 22nd year.
C. Ergen That's great if you were playing blackjack.
J. DeFranco That'd be another good thing to have 21. Anyway, so
now we're going to go to the fourth seven, so our
first caller who calls in and can tell us where we
launched our first satellite from, what country did
we launch our first satellite from will get seven
months of the Dish Network Everything Pak at no
charge.
C. Ergen You gotta be kidding! That's a lot of money. The
Everything Pak is of course all our America's Top
150, it's all our premium channels, HBO, Cinemax,
Starz Encore, and Show Time. That retails for $72.99,
something like that or $75. What is that? $77.98. No,
it's $72.99. Yeah, I knew we did a savings, $72.99 it
retails for because we give you a discount when you
buy everything so if you get seven months of that
it's almost $500. So just the first caller who can
tell us.
J. DeFranco The first caller that can tell us where we launched
Echo I from, which country did we launch it from.
C. Ergen Did we put a number up there for them to call? I
guess we probably ought to do that.
J. DeFranco I hope we put a number up there for them. So we'll
see what happens there. So that's a little giveaway,
something interesting.
Okay programming, we've got some announcements on
programming. We've added CNN Espanol, CNN Espanol has
been added to ... well, let's just take a look. So
this is Spanish language version of the worldwide CNN
news channel, obviously latest in politics, sports,
weather, business, travel, entertainment, news. And
this has been added to our three Dish Latino
packages, it's on Channel 633.
Charlie, earlier we talked ...
C. Ergen No extra charge.
J. DeFranco At no extra charge. We talked a little bit, we've got
another programming announcement here but this really
does relate to must carry a little bit and all
these local channels we're putting up, it has to do
with PBS. And for quite a while we had a national PBS
feed up there but now with adding ...
C. Ergen That we sold on an a la cart basis.
J. DeFranco Correct. And with us launching additional local
cities and so on and so forth, of course we did have
a lot of requests for people who wanted their local
PBS as opposed to the national PBS for timing and
being in the right time zone and those kinds of
things. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about
what's happening there because now we are required
actually to provide the local one and some people may
have gotten used to the national one.
C. Ergen Right. Well, it happens sometimes but the must carry
law that went into effect on January 1st provides us,
does not let us sell PBS separately. We have to
package that now with all the network channels that
we show in a local market, so obviously those 36 or
37 markets that we have local networks in, we now
have the local PBS, it's all included with of course
ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, typically UPN and Warner Brothers
and PBS and some independent stations all for the
$5.99.
When we put the local PBS in, we are then not allowed
by PBS to show their national feed, so your national
feed is replaced by your local feed. Now in those
cities where we do not have local-to-local, in other
words the vast majority of the geographic area of the
country but a little bit less than the majority of
the population, there we can still provide your
national PBS to you if you're not in an area that
gets our local-to-local.
So hopefully that's clear. But I guess the simple
answer is when you get the PBS that we're providing
to you from the Dish Network is the one that we, the
only one that we're allowed under the law to provide
to you.
J. DeFranco So if you're receiving your local, you'll get the
local PBS and if you are not receiving your locals,
you get the national PBS.
C. Ergen That's right. Well, if we don't have the locals being
broadcast. You could be living in Denver, for
example, and you wanted just PBS, then you would get
the Denver PBS, you would not get the national even
though you weren't in the locals.
J. DeFranco If you're in a DMA where we have locals available,
you'll get the local PBS.
C. Ergen Well, if you put the map back up, you can see the
green areas. Those are going to be your local PBS. So
the big cities, the top 37 markets that we have local
like Denver and New York and Los Angeles ...
J. DeFranco They get the local PBS.
C. Ergen They get your local PBS. If you're in Glendive,
Montana, then you get national PBS because we don't
do your locals yet. Okay.
J. DeFranco All right and there it is.
C. Ergen So white areas, you're going to get the national PBS,
green areas, you're going to get your local PBS.
J. DeFranco Okay, one more programming announcement. We've got a
new channel of international, actually multiple
channels of international programming but a new
language. This is Chinese, we're adding Chinese.
Let's take a quick look.
----------
CHINESE PROGRAMMING
Dish Network now offers three top Chinese television channels available in our
new Chinese Plus Pak, Phoenix North American Chinese Channel, ATV Home Channel
and CCTV 4, ensure the best Mandarin and Cantonese entertainment 24 hours a day
in the comfort of your home including daily news, dramas, movies and much more.
Order the Chinese Plus Pak for only $24.99 per month or enjoy Phoenix North
American Chinese Channel for only $14.99 per month. Call 1-877-446-2742 today.
----------
J. DeFranco Okay and I wasn't sure if they mentioned it, but two
Mandarin and one Cantonese.
C. Ergen Again, requires a second dish because they're
broadcast on our wing satellites, but obviously many
requested. Chinese has been one of our most requested
international channels and we did three at one time,
which is pretty good. Okay?
J. DeFranco Okay, Charlie, we've got a lot of questions here that
have come in, some on the merger. This one, this
first one is from Dave and Dave says, he's talking
about local channels as it relates to the merger of
EchoStar and DirecTV. He says, "There are many DMAs
that don't offer the networks." I think you may have
answered this, but he says, "Will we still be able to
get distant nets to fill in the gap?"
C. Ergen An answer is yes, and what Dave is talking about, you
may live in ... I know for example, Charlottesville,
Virginia, has I think only one network affiliate,
maybe it's the NBC affiliate. That's the only station
they have. Well in our All Local All American Plan,
in Charlottesville in a few years you will get the
local NBC station from Charlottesville and then your
other network signals will be a distant signal. It
may be the area next to you in Virginia or it could
be a distant signal from New York or Atlanta or
Chicago, the ones we offer today. So that's the way
that'll work. Some rural areas have two or three of
the networks and they're missing a couple of the
networks and you'll receive your local ones and then
you'll receive a distant one if your particular
community doesn't have a local network.
J. DeFranco Okay, also he says, "Can you comment on what the
standard for receivers will be?" In other words
EchoStar or DirecTV.
C. Ergen We haven't ... again, that's a good question because
just for our viewers, we use two different standards
as satellite providers. It's very similar to the beta
VHS situation that used to happen in VCRs. That's one
reason we have to do the merger because without the
merger, neither one of us could afford to change out
all our boxes while the other one continued to stay
in business. So we really had to put the merger
together where we have time then to change out one
set of equipment.
We will do that. First of all, we haven't made a
decision on which set of equipment we would change
out. We have a transition team that's really putting
that together. We use an MPEG2 kind of DVD standard
which is kind of world standard; DirecTV's is a DSS
standard, which is kind of the standard that they set
when they first started in the United States. So we
haven't made a decision there. But regardless of
which system that we change out, it will be done free
of charge to you as consumers for the services that
you're receiving today. So I guess it's kind of good
news if you get switched out, it's kind of good news
if you don't get switched out because it's not going
to cost you anything extra to receive the services
you're getting today. And additionally, if you don't
get local channels from us today and you want local
channels with the new service, with the new cities
that we're doing, those will switch you out, switch
out your equipment free of charge as well for it.
J. DeFranco Okay, this next one is from William and William says,
"I live in a rural part of Florida in an NRTC
territory. I understand that the merger will take us
from two to one satellite provider. How will the
merger benefit me?"
C. Ergen Well, first of all the NRTC territory, they actually
have a contract with DirecTV that gives them the
right to sell DirecTV in their territory which is
about 9 million homes, so in the very most rural
areas of the country, their NRTC will continue to
exist and we will continue to honor their contract.
So in your case, your particular case, you probably
will still have two choices of satellite providers.
Now there may be an instance ... it brings up a good
point, and I think this is the one area of the merger
that the regulators should take a look at for
protection of consumers, but there may be a
situation, for example, if he wasn't in an NRTC
territory and perhaps the new EchoStar/DirecTV system
was the only provider of television and there's some
3 million homes like this in America, then maybe you
would think I have less choice. And I think really
the key there is that our one rate national plan, one
rate card plan, will allow you to get all those
services at the same price where there's robust
competition.
But additionally and maybe I can visually show you a
little bit here. I think the key is that what you
have today is these two satellite companies that all
have these 500 channels of video and they're exactly
the same, basically the
same video, so you can pretty much interchange them
and that's nice that you have a choice of providers.
But of course it's a pretty inefficient way to do
business. When we put those two companies together
and make it one company, we free up (I need a shot
pan back) we free up all this spectrum, we free up
all this extra spectrum and what we do is we turn
this kind of one-dimensional thing into a
three-dimensional satellite service that can compete
with cable because cable's already three-dimensional
and that three-dimensional service of course can do
those 500 channels of video still, but it can do a
lot more things than that, it can do all your locals,
so just like cable can.
So now all of a sudden it's got another dimension to
the business. It can do high definition television,
video on demand, all these advanced services that
you'll never get without this merger. And of course
we're going to be able to high speed internet
broadband access. And we do this all nationwide at
one price, I know kind of all off a single dish, it
looks like this, something like this. Again, that's
the benefit of the merger is that you have more
choices of services. As long as you're protected on
the price, we think overall you're going to be much
better off as a consumer.
And I think that's really the kind of million dollar
question. And again, I mentioned this earlier, but
maybe I had this upside down, I don't know if that's
right, but it means whether you're in a town of five
or a city of five million, you're going to be able to
get the same services at the same price. And that's
really the key. Otherwise you might be in a town of
five and you might have two choices of people who
just give you video channels and don't give you other
services. And as long as you're protected on the
price, which we're willing to do in this merger with
One Nation, One Rate Card, then I think overall
you're much, much better off.
And that's kind of the million dollar question for
the rate regulators to answer. Are you better off
with the one-dimensional satellite providers, are you
better off with a more robust three-dimensional
system that competes with the three-dimensional cable
systems out there.
J. DeFranco Okay. Charlie, this brings out another note, it has
to do with the merger though. This is from Mitch and
Mitch says, "What are your plans for carrying the
digital feeds from the local broadcast stations now
that you've committed to carrying all stations
nationwide?" So I think what he's saying is with must
carry does that also mean that we'll be carrying the
HD feeds? "Also, I understand you've indicated that
the 12 channels of HDTV programming will be made
available shortly after the `merger and
consolidation.' What commitment if any and timeframes
relative to this are we making as a part of our FCC
filings?"
C. Ergen First, we've already made our FCC filings on all this
and I think it's on our website, on our dish merger
website that we showed you there, you can see all
those filings and read that information, if you'd
like to. The digital channels that broadcasters have
of course have been slow to develop but
there are no must carry laws that require the
carriage of all their digital signals. Having said
that, obviously we're going to carry at least one of
their signals and we're going to put that in the
digital format, so we will carry at least one signal
from every broadcaster and put that in a digital
format. Broadcasters like CBS, the owned and operated
CBS, we do an HDTV today and if we can get commitment
from the national broadcasters, of course we're going
to be able to do that from the fully owned and
operated stations. It's probably not likely that the
next generation of satellites that we're building
will have the capacity to do all HDTV signals in
every local market.
But again there isn't much HDTV out there today,
particularly in the rural markets and you may never
see those in rural markets, so we think we're going
to have probably the most robust product out there.
Additionally the 12 channels of HDTV we're going to
be able to do basically as soon as the merger is
approved and again that's going to be made up of
things. It'll be CBS because we have an agreement
with them we don't have with the other networks, but
it also will include movies, it includes sports,
there's a 24 hour sports channel that's in HDTV,
it'll include Showtime, HBO, hopefully Starz Encore,
we'll have something on HBO, hopefully PBS will have
some HDTV, Discovery's talked about HDTV, so it's
those kinds of channels that will bring it to you.
Again, I don't think in my lifetime, for most of you
out there, you're going to see 12 channels of HDTV
available to you, whether you live in a cable area or
not because the economics of doing that are just very
tough across all America. By satellite we can do
that.
J. DeFranco Let's take just a couple more e-mails and we've got
some callers on hold. This is from Ed. This is
interesting, Charlie. He says, "I'm a new
subscriber," what the heck's the deal here? He says,
"I'm a new subscriber and love the service. I don't
know why I didn't dump cable a couple years ago." Oh
I thought he was at a neighbor's house or something
watching. "I live in Jacksonville, Florida, and read
about your most recent launch. Will this allow me to
get my locals in my area." I think you touched on
that.
C. Ergen And the answer is yes and you can expect within
months of the merger being approved that you will
have Jacksonville. You're in one of the top 100
markets, so we're committed to doing that and you
would have ... If the merger were approved tomorrow,
probably a couple of months from now you'd have your
local channels via satellite so make sure that you
let your representatives know from Florida that you
support the merger and we can do that for you.
J. DeFranco Charlie, we've got a winner of our first contest.
Anthony Salessi, I believe it is, Salessi, I think it
is, out of Brooklyn knew that our Echo-I satellite
was launched from China. So seven months of the
Everything Pak. Not a bad 15 minutes work for
Anthony. I think he did pretty good.
Okay, we'll take this last one and then we'll take
some phone calls. So did EchoStar VII going into
service add better reception for Puerto Rico and do
you plan to include Puerto Rico in your local
channels as far as our coverage?
C. Ergen I don't know the answer to that question. It does
replace EchoStar IV, it does have more power. We
didn't plan it to go to Puerto Rico because it's so
far away from the normal footprint. We do have a spot
beam on Puerto Rico, that's EchoStar VIII. So we have
a spot beam on Puerto Rico which is coming on
EchoStar VIII probably for the local network and so
forth, but it's not ... we're not geared toward a
national service at this point in time, Puerto Rico.
I believe with the merger then we get a robust
service to Puerto Rico, but not without the merger.
J. DeFranco Okay, we've got Kevin out there. Kevin.
Kevin Yes, good evening.
J. DeFranco Welcome to the Charlie Chat. What can we answer for
you this evening?
Kevin Thank you. Getting a little concerned. I'm up in the
north Jersey/New York area and the Yes Network which
will be broadcasting Yankee games and well as Mets
and Devils' games in the years to come has been
picked up by a lot of cable outlets as well as
DirecTV and I've yet to hear anything from customer
service or Dish Network themselves on the status of
that network.
J. DeFranco Okay, good question.
C. Ergen Good question. We get that question occasionally now.
The Yes Network is going to have I think 100 plus of
the Yankees' games this year. We are in negotiations
with them. We have not reached an agreement with
them. It's very public in the trade publications that
they're asking something north of $2 a subscriber per
month whether you happen to watch the Yankees or not.
With our costs and margins, that's a pretty ...
that's an extreme cost if it'd be passed on. I'm not
particularly optimistic today that we're going to
reach agreement with them but if we can get a fair
price from them that is fair to all of our customers,
then we're very anxious to do that, but we haven't
been able to do that yet.
So again, it's ... we realize it's an important
channel to our customers in New York and we're
certainly actively trying to negotiate that, but it's
got to be fair. And so far we haven't been able to do
that. I think it's a couple of weeks until the season
starts, so we'll work hard on it up until that time.
If we're able to get the network, obviously you'll
see it, an announcement, you'll see the channel. If
we're not able to get the network, then we'll make an
announcement that we haven't got the network. So hold
on for a couple of weeks and we'll see what happens.
And I guess Channel 100. What channel would we be
putting the information on? Channel 101? What is it
we have our Dish Network News?
Female We do FYI.
C. Ergen What channel is that on? If I wanted to find
information on Dish Network as a customer, what
channel am I going to go to? I used to ... I'm asking
the audience here. I used to watch and I'd see an
update on local news and so forth and you don't do
that anymore?
Female We do 30 seconds FYI.
C. Ergen Oh, okay, so we do it in commercial breaks.
Female Correct.
M. Schwimmer And the website would be a good place.
C. Ergen The website'll have it, we'll have it on commercial
breaks.
J. DeFranco Website's a good place if you want to stay ... do it
on your schedule.
C. Ergen We'll have commercial breaks where we talk about it.
Okay, or you could call us. We won't have, obviously
until the first game is played, we're not going to
have it unless we have it sooner than that, we
wouldn't have an announcement. So you can call
obviously when the season starts.
J. DeFranco Okay, this is a question regarding international
service from Mr. Walzack. This is interesting. He
says, "Are there any chances of having TV Palonia
available at the 148 degree location. I live in the
Seattle area and 61.5 signals are not easily
available."
C. Ergen Okay, I don't know.
J. DeFranco I guess we have TV Palonia only in the East?
M. Schwimmer That's correct. TV Palonia right now is on 61.5 only.
We are in the process of finalizing discussions with
TV Palonia which would include launch of that service
at the 148 west longitude spot. Those discussions
aren't completed, but we're hopeful that in fact we
will have the service available there soon.
J. DeFranco Thanks, Michael.
C. Ergen Do you have another Polish channel? Is that PolSat
[sp], is that on 148?
M. Schwimmer PolSat is at 61.5 only right now.
C. Ergen 61.5 only.
M. Schwimmer Actually I don't ... I will check on that and get
back.
C. Ergen This is Michael Schwimmer, our Senior Vice President
of Programming. We stumped him. Stan stumped us, you
know, but we get the peanut gallery on here and they
get stumped on the first question. We'll find an
answer to that.
J. DeFranco Alright, next question has to do with HD again.
Earlier you talked about our ability with the launch
of the additional satellites and the merger, Charlie,
to put up HD and maybe you mentioned this, but I'm
not sure. What about the content? In other words, is
there other content available and is it possible we
would put up some HD sooner? Before the merger?
C. Ergen It's probably not. It's not so much a content
question as a bandwidth question, obviously. With all
the must carry channels we had to put up, we're
pretty much out of bandwidth for high definition
because the high definition channel takes up what
normally would be maybe six, six normal video
channels, five or six normal channels. So don't look
for any more high definition programming from us
prior to the merger.
J. DeFranco Okay, let's take one more call and then we'll move on
with our show and we'll have a few more Q&A questions
a little later in the show. Larry, are you there?
Larry Yes, I am.
J. DeFranco Larry, welcome to the Charlie Chat. What can we
answer for you this evening?
Larry Well, the thing that I'm concerned with is when you
have the merger, and I'm sure hoping this is going to
go through, I would like to know if there's going to
be commonality in programming between the two current
systems. For instance, will Dish customers pick up
programming that DirecTV has that Dish currently
doesn't have and vice versa for the DirecTV
customers, will they pick up additional programming
that they currently don't have that Dish Network does
have.
J. DeFranco That's a good question.
C. Ergen I think I understand the question. The answer, the
short answer is yes, there will be commonality once
we have a transition period where we put everybody on
the same platform and so forth. Probably the biggest
question we get on that is will Dish Network
customers be able to get some of the sports like NFL
Season Ticket and the answer to that is to the extent
that DirecTV or Dish have that service and realize
that contract is up later this year, then we'll both
have it across the board or some of the other sports
things. So that's the main thing you might see a
difference with almost immediately, the other
channels that may not be common. There's only a few
of them we'd transition in over time. So looking at a
year or two.
One of the positives of the merger if there happens
to be a channel on DirecTV which is typically sports,
like NFL Season Ticket, that you don't get that you'd
like to have, we're going to be able to do that for
you.
J. DeFranco Okay, thanks for the question. Charlie, this weekend
we preview on Starz so those of you that have joined
us this evening, you've got a heads up on this, you
can see some great programming. Let's take a look.
----------
"Bridget Jones wanton sex goddess. Mum!"
Starz, number one in new hit movies brings you the Starz free preview this
weekend, March 8th, 9th and 10th. See new hit movies like Bridget Jones' Diary,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Unbreakable and Starz Pictures presents an
original motion picture event, Joe and Max. Tune into the Starz free preview
this weekend March 8th, 9th and 10th. Watch the Starz Super Pak free preview
Channels 350 through 356 and 340 on Dish Network.
----------
J. DeFranco Okay so exciting, free preview. We also have some
original programming. Let's take a look at this
coming up.
----------
MAX AND LOUIS TRAILER
To them it was a sport, to the countries it was war. The Louis/Schmelling fights
were not about boxing, they the greatest sociological events in the history of
sports, but they transcended the ring. Roosevelt, Louis got them convinced,
you're a Nazi ...
----------
J. DeFranco Hey, that looks interesting.
C. Ergen Yeah. We have a give-away.
J. DeFranco Starz's been nice enough to send us over a give-away.
Now we want to be clear about this. They're pair of
boxing gloves. Take a look. Starz Super Pak and they
signed by the actors, the actors in Joe and Max, so
that's Leonard Roberts and Til Schwieger, I believe.
C. Ergen Well that would have been quite the trick if they
could have got Joe Louis to sign them.
J. DeFranco Wow, with Starz on there.
C. Ergen That would have been ... since Starz only existed
since ...
J. DeFranco Well, we have to be clear.
C. Ergen How do you call in and win this one?
J. DeFranco Okay, it also features in the show, in Joe and Max,
Richard Roundtree. Richard Roundtree, I know a
familiar name if you've been watching TV for quite a
while, so who is the 1970s title character Richard
Roundtree is most known as?
C. Ergen Well I know that one.
J. DeFranco Well you're not in the contest. So first caller who
can answer that will get those boxing gloves. Pretty
neat. So there's that.
Okay, let's continue on. You've got the number. Did
we put the number on the screen?
C. Ergen I saw it on there this time.
J. DeFranco Okay, put the number on the screen,
C. Ergen I saw it on there. I was paying attention, I saw it.
J. DeFranco Okay so it's Oscar time. You know we have some
friends at Turner Classic Movies, they always have
some great programs.
C. Ergen They did the Oscars, like 31 days of Oscars. That's
good. You could almost tune in any day and get a
great movie on Turner Classic Movies.
J. DeFranco Every movie for the month will be an Oscar nominated
movie. Pretty neat deal. So let's take a quick look.
----------
ROCKY SCENES.
Watch Rocky and more than 300 other commercial-free classics. 31 days of Oscars
all March long, only on Turner Classic Movies.
----------
C. Ergen I don't know how to follow that. [laughter]
J. DeFranco Okay, so 31 days, it's a wonderful thing and a
special gift here, 70 Years of the Oscars got a
little give-away here, very nice and what do we have
to do to get this one, Charlie? From Turner Classic
Movies the question is who is the veteran actor who
played Rocky's trainer in the 1976 film.
C. Ergen Okay, I know that too, right.
J. DeFranco Okay and not Mic, I mean his real name, right?
C. Ergen You saw him right there in the clip.
J. DeFranco Yeah, right. So here we go. Let's take a few more
questions. These, actually I just got a handful, just
came in. This came in at 7:28 through e-mail and
this is from Johnny Woodward and he says, "How will
the merger affect the pricing of the different
programming packages?"
C. Ergen Well again, I think that's one of the great things
about the merger. It's probably one of the things I'm
most excited about is that today as satellite
providers we typically pay a little bit higher price
than the big cable companies today and with the
merger, if we have 7 million subscribers today and
DirecTV has 10 million subscribers, then by putting
those 17 million subscribers together, there's volume
discounts in some of the contracts and it means that
some of our prices actually go down a little bit or
they don't go up as much from a programming price
perspective. So when that happens, then we're able to
pass some of those savings on to you guys and it
means that ultimately your pricing will be lower than
it otherwise would have been because today the big
volume discounts go to the big cable companies and of
course those guys are merging and consolidating and
getting bigger as well.
So typically that means that we'll be able to see
smaller, we will see smaller increases in pricing
than maybe we otherwise would have without the merger
and then that affects you guys because we're able to
keep our costs down which then get passed on to you.
So hopefully ... I don't want to be on TV every year
having to raise people's prices and I think one of
the things the merger allows us to do is we probably
still will have price increases in the future because
the programming contracts continue to go up and
obviously the cost of sports continues to go up, but
those price increases would be much less than they
otherwise would be and I think you could expect
they'd be more in line with inflation rather than the
two to three times inflation the cable guys have been
passing on. If we can compete with cable, then we'll
hold their price increases down for the rest of the
country, the vast majority of people of course who
subscribe to cable and then if we can do broadband
and other services like interactivity, then we can
get other revenue sources that of course can keep the
prices down.
It's one of the great things about the merger, and we
just got to get it done and take advantage of that.
J. DeFranco Okay. Charlie, we have a winner. We have a winner of
the boxing gloves and that is Ryan Newberg, excuse
me, Ryan out of Newberg, Indiana. So Ryan out of
Newberg, Indiana, knew that Richard Roundtree ...
C. Ergen Was Shaft.
J. DeFranco Shaft. That's right. You really did know.
C. Ergen Yeah. I can do the other one too. Well don't we have
answer on here? Yeah, there it is.
J. DeFranco I can't believe that anyway.
C. Ergen That's true.
J. DeFranco Okay, next question ...
C. Ergen Well they had a movie, they had a Shaft movie like a
year ago, right? Was Richard Roundtree in it? He was
in it. No, he wasn't in it, the other guy was in it.
Male Samuel Jackson.
C. Ergen Samuel, Samuel L. Jackson.
J. DeFranco Okay, this is from Joe Miller. He says, "Will there
be any antenna upgrades needed to receive the new
locals when the merger is complete, besides Dish
500?" So if you have a Dish 500, will you need
anything else?
C. Ergen And the answer is in some cases there will be a new
antenna. If ... of course if you have Dish 500 today,
so you've probably got about an 80% chance that you
will not need a new antenna, but in some of the
markets where we might broadcast those markets from
the 101 location, which is only a DirecTV location
today and some of the locals would come from that
location, you might need a new antenna which again in
that particular case, you'd get that antenna free of
charge if you're subscribing at local.
And again, it'll be ... the antenna actually looks at
three satellites at one time. And just part of the
improvement that we got out there. For a lot of you
who have a Dish 500 today, you probably won't need
any kind of upgrade to your antenna.
J. DeFranco Okay. Another good question regarding the merger,
Charlie. This comes in from Gary. He says, "You've
indicated that DirecTV offers programming to South
America and Central America. With the merger of
DirecTV will the Caribbean be able to get Dish
Network programming?
C. Ergen The answer is in general, no. The Caribbean
programming and South American programming is a
different set of contracts being broadcast through a
subsidiary called DirecTV Latin America. Those are
broadcast from a different set of satellites. We do
not have ... as Dish Network or even as DirecTV,
neither one of us had the rights to programming such
as HBO, the current HBO that we show here for those
countries. So we have to get rights for those
countries. Those rights today are held by DirecTV
Latin America or another company called Sky, I think
it's called Sky, who broadcasts to South America. And
we will again, of course hopefully get more and more
programming contracts for South America, for the
Caribbean, but we go by the copyright laws that are
for each country.
Now Puerto Rico can receive, U.S. Virgin Islands can
receive U.S. programming. But for the most part,
South America and other Caribbean islands have to
receive the rights that are held by DirecTV Latin
America.
J. DeFranco Okay. We've got another caller. Pat, are you there?
Pat Yes, I am.
J. DeFranco Welcome to the Charlie Chat. What can we answer for
you?
Pat Well with the spot beam when we're out ... I'm
actually from Washington and I'm in Arizona right now
and I like to watch my Seattle stations. Will that
spot beam cause that to not happen?
C. Ergen Well, there are two things that are going to happen.
One is by law, if you're in Arizona, you're going to
have to watch the Arizona stations unless you are in
technically a white area which means you're outside a
local reception area which means with an outdoor
antenna, you can't get reception which is like a
crazy, grade B kind of law that we have today. But
basically in Arizona, you will receive the Arizona
stations which could either be Phoenix or Tucson with
the merger.
The second thing that happens with the spot beam
satellite, if you looked back and looked at the
satellites, the beam for Washington is only on
Washington, so the beam actually doesn't send a
signal to Arizona and so even if you wanted to
receive it, you couldn't technically receive it. So
it's one of those ... I guess that's to some
customers a potential negative, but it is the law. We
just follow the law and it is the technical way we do
it.
There are, I think, half a dozen channels that will
continue to broadcast on a national basis. If you
have an RV I think you have an exemption and can
receive those six on a national basis. Those today
are New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and
Los Angeles.
J. DeFranco Six cities.
C. Ergen Six cities. And those will continue to be broadcast
on a national basis. And if you're in a white area or
you have an RV and get an RV exemption under the law,
then you can watch those channels from where you are.
J. DeFranco Okay. Thanks of the call, Pat. Alright, Charlie,
we've kind of alluded to earlier, we have Club Dish
we want to remind our customers out there about the
great program we have and I think there's some new
information now. Let's take a look.
----------
CLUB DISH
It's a club, but more than just any club, it's Club Dish. What's in it for you?
Each time a friend joins Dish Network, you'll save $60 off programming for you.
Have lots of friends? You don't have a bill. Okay, okay, here's how you get into
Club Dish. Call Dish Network, ask for a Club Dish enrollment packet. Your
friends start signing up for Dish Network, you start saving, but that's just the
start. Get more free stuff, even a priority customer service phone number. Call,
give, get. Any questions, call and get into Club Dish. It's working!
----------
J. DeFranco Okay so Club Dish. What is the person who is our
current customer who refers somebody, what do they
get out of this?
C. Ergen Well, they get ... oh, we're going to see that? I
thought it was going to be another video. They get $5
a month for 12 months for a year, that's $60 for each
referral plus an automatic membership in Club Dish
and Club Dish, how many? How many do you get? I think
you get 5 Pay-per-View coupons, let's see, yeah,
there it is in the bottom, 5 Pay-per-View coupons,
you get a priority toll free customer service number,
free dish ...
J. DeFranco Free dish move.
C. Ergen We're getting a move, we do that for you for free.
You're getting a subscription to Dish Flicks which is
great. Programming guide for all the premium services
that we have. It's funny, you know, it's a value of
$177 so you get people who say gee, I wish ... we
unfortunately had that dollar price increase this
year. People say gee I wish you didn't have a price
increase. Well the great thing is you can have a $5
price reduction by referring someone. Here's Dish
Flicks that is the program guide that has all the
movies that you get free. I think it's about, what is
it, $2 or $3 a month, $3 to $4 a month typically.
It's in the programming guide. And it helps us, of
course, keep our cost down if we get referrals in
terms of business and helps you, so hopefully if
you're not in Club Dish and you're watching the show,
take advantage, learn about Club Dish and everybody's
got a ... usually a relative, a mother, a father,
son, daughter, or whatever who should be watching
satellite television and Club Dish is a way for both
of you to benefit from that.
J. DeFranco Okay, Charlie, we're going to hopefully get just a
few more questions in, but you know, we can never
answer all the questions we get on the Charlie Chat,
so we've got a few places for you to go to find
answers to your questions. Obviously you can go to
our website. Dish Takes is inserted in your monthly
bill. It shows some of the new information. Dish
Entertainment Magazine which obviously is a great
program guide in addition to keeping you up-to-date
on things. Channel 101 is some information that helps
you in your remote control and then Dish FYI is what
we talked about earlier actually, which is something
that you'd see, it's kind of a commercial, so in
between where you might normally see a commercial,
you'll see Dish FYI and in fact we have one right now
on solar conjunction. Let's take a quick look.
----------
SOLAR CONJUNCTION
Over the next few days Mother Nature may play tricks with your TV picture. The
fancy name for this is solar conjunction. What happens is the sun lines up right
behind our satellite and for a couple of minutes
you may lose your signal or notice a little bit of picture break up. This
happens with all satellites during the spring and fall, so don't worry, it
doesn't happen often and when it does, it will only last a moment or so. Just
blame it on Mother Nature.
----------
J. DeFranco Okay, so that's an example of FYI so there might be
... there'll be other things that you'll see as
you're watching TV that kind of keeps you up-to-date
on some things that are happening at the Dish
Network. Charlie, we have a winner. David from Travis
Air Force Base knew that Mic was ...
C. Ergen Burgess Meredith.
J. DeFranco Burgess Meredith. Very good. Burgess Meredith. So he
will win that ... what did he win? The book?
C. Ergen He won the book. He won the 70 Years of the Oscars.
J. DeFranco He won the 70 Years of the Oscars. That's a neat, a
very neat book.
C. Ergen And we do have an answer to the question that stumped
Michael Schwimmer on programming which is PolSat is
on the 148 degree slot, so it is on the Western slot.
TV Palonia is not there yet. We're in negotiations to
put them there but that hasn't been finalized yet.
J. DeFranco Okay, this just came in from Don Curley, Charlie, and
this has to do with ... "I understand StarBand
supports a PC. However, does Dish Network and/or
StarBand ever plan to support MacIntosh? If so,
when?"
C. Ergen The answer to that is probably not any time soon. The
economics of being able to do that for a smaller
amount of base hasn't justified that investment yet.
Obviously one of the benefits of the merger is as we
put the two bases together, as we go on the broad
beam more economically, across the entire United
States and that's the kind of stuff that we can
afford to invest in. But today, I don't believe
StarBand has current plans, I'm looking at the
audience here, current plans to support the
MacIntosh.
J. DeFranco Okay, next one. This is from Chuck and Chuck says,
"We are currently getting DSL service through DirecTV
internet. Will the merger have any impact on our DSL
service?"
C. Ergen The answer would be no, provided that that internet
service hasn't changed in the interim before
obviously we're able ... the companies are merged. I
mean I think that DSL as a technology will change
over time and obviously that's going to be
independent of the merger itself. But I'm not all
that familiar with their service and DSL, so I'm
probably technically not the right one to answer that
question. That's probably a better one for them, but
we don't anticipate when we put the companies
together major changes in that kind of service. We do
hope that we have other partners in DSL such as the
phone companies so we can provide them a broader
scale and hopefully even more economical than it is
today.
J. DeFranco Okay we've got a caller. Roy, are you there?
Roy Here.
J. DeFranco Welcome to the Chat. What can we answer for you this
evening?
Roy Hey, you know first of all you have like great
service and everything. We get your Chinese pack here
in the house, your Chinese international programming,
and we get like three channels. And I was wondering
if you're going to pick up like more programming
because there are other satellite companies in this
area that seem to be in competition with you guys
that are offering more programming.
J. DeFranco Are you talking about Chinese programming or just
generally?
Roy Jade Star is offering about five or six Chinese
programs.
J. DeFranco So primarily Chinese?
Roy Right.
C. Ergen And the answer is that we continue to ... the three
channels are the three best channels that we think we
can find in Chinese. They are obviously competitors
to us and some of the channels out there and I don't
believe that ... we'll see how the Chinese, you know,
pick up is on the three channels that we have, which
is a lot of channels for us to have from an
international basis and if there's something's that
compelling that people want, I guess we'd look at it.
M. Schwimmer Well certainly and Jade has not made their
programming available to Dish Network so if that's
something that becomes available to us, then we'll
certainly look at it, but so far I can tell you that
while we have tried to convince Jade that this is a
good place to have some its programming, so far they
have been unwilling to do so.
J. DeFranco Okay, Charlie, got just a couple minutes left. Any
closing comments for our viewers out there?
C. Ergen If you watch C-SPAN tomorrow you'll probably get to
see me again if you just can't get enough of this
Dish Network down here. And also, you can contact our
website. I hope they'll put it back up on the screen
again to make your political views known and again
we're anxious to continue to improve our service and
give you a better service at a more economical rate.
And we think we have a lot of plans on how to do that
and looking forward to doing that and excited about
our last launch and what that means for our customers
and looking forward to the next one.
J. DeFranco Okay, next Chat is April 8th, same time, 9:00 p.m.
Eastern time, Channel 101. We want to thank you very
much for taking your time and celebrating these
wonderful milestones with us. Thank you.