Dish Network ups prices
September 27, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network, despite currently suffering some 77 local channels being blacked out over carriage disputes, is putting its prices up by $5 per month.
Penalties for not paying the monthly fee on time will also rise from a nominal $2 to a more aggressive $12 whenever a payment date is missed.
Prices go up on October 12th and will take a subscriber who buys Dish’s ‘Top 200’ channel offering to at least $107.99 per month. Its ‘Top 250’ will be $117.99, while its ‘America’s Everything Pack’ will cost $142.99. Additional bundles are available including Dish’s so-called ‘ethnic’ bundles which also rise in price.
Dish, in a letter to subscribers, says: “The price that we pay for programming continues to rise. In fact, the fastest growing cost we and all other TV providers have is driven by the cost we pay the programmers.”
Dish Network is in a period of ‘managed decline’ as subscribers evaporate. It lost 197,000 subscribers during Q2 this year and taking its base DBS subscriber numbers to below 7 million.