Entries from February 2008 ↓

Dish Network lawyers will be busy in the months ahead as the satellite television carrier was slapped with a lawsuit in New York by the NFL. The league filed the suit seeking relief from Dish Network’s recent decision to move the NFL Network to the America’s Top 200 package. The network was previously carried on the America’s Top 100 until being moved last week by Dish.

The NFL was understandably irked by the move, which by most estimates cost the NFL Network around 4 million households in the penetration game. The latest dispute adds another headache to an ongoing dispute with Comcast, and the NFL’s inability to strike a deal with Time Warner. The league has been forced to fight every battle to keep its network from meeting an early demise.

Dish Network’s decision to move the network had to do in part with its unhappiness with the NFL’s decision to simulcast the Patriots-Giants on CBS and NBC the last weekend of the season. Dish Network and DIRECTV were losers in that decision, as they stood to gain new subscribers from cable operators who did not carry the network.

Commenting on the suit, the NFL had to say:

“EchoStar’s response to the simulcast of the historic December 29 Giants-Patriots game is unwarranted and not in the best interest of its subscribers. The NFL is the most popular sport in the nation and this decision is taking NFL Network away from millions of subscribers around the nation that are football fans and have been receiving NFL Network’s quality programming. We are seeking to prevent EchoStar from violating the terms of its distribution agreement with the NFL Network.”

Interestingly, Dish Network did not move the network off the America’s Top 100 package until eight weeks after the Patriots-Giants regular season game, and three weeks after the Super Bowl. But now they have taken a stand against what they feel was a damaging decision on the part of the NFL Network.