• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, August 10, 2012

Dropping AMC and three sister channels has been good for Dish’s bottom line. That's the sentiment from Charlie Ergen, chairman of Dish Network, according to the Denver Business Journal.

But you have to wonder how much this kind of criteria could extend to other networks. Wouldn't dropping say ESPN, CBS, Fox News, Discovery, NBC, USA or TNT also help the satellite service’s  bottom line?

Ergen says some key research shows what Dish customers want: “We have data, real data, from our customers, and for whatever reason our customers don’t watch some of those critically acclaimed channels at the level that we read about in the paper — perhaps because we skew a bit rural or whatever."

Hmm…Just wondering if that data also has "ratings" or "Nielsen" or "demographics" affixed to the research. We know it's set-top-box data, for sure.

Some TV executives and consumers have complained that ESPN should be dropped from many systems, or at least put on a separate pay tier, given the estimated sky-high $5-a-subscriber monthly fee it charges cable, satellite, and telco operators.

Wouldn't that help the bottom line as well? The answer to this question might be: C'mon. ESPN pulls in huge ratings, as much as 20 million for a top level "Monday Night Football" game. Yeah. And we imagine Dish sells some advertising in those games. But ESPN's ratings are still a fraction -- less than 10% -- of the 290 million potential U.S. viewers in around 116 million homes.

Could you make a case for losing USA Network, Fox News or TNT -- networks which also garner a pretty hefty wholesale price tag from TV distributors? Each of those networks gets an average 2 million or so viewers a night, or less than 1% of all potential viewers.

Ergen claims Dish might lose some subscribers due to the lack of those critically acclaimed AMC shows, but the economics would be worth it. We know AMC programs aren’t among the top cable programs in a given week. But couldn't that statement extend to a number of other cable and broadcast shows?

Consumers will always complain about the dropping of specific channels. But even if one nixes the usual whining that "higher fees could be passed on to consumers," distributors could always tell customers the obvious: There isn't a big enough critical mass that watches any particular network or program that makes any TV show a must-have.

Many advertisers have realized this in recent years.

Decades ago, this wasn't the case. Only a handful of networks got the lion's share of viewing. Marketers had to make sure they were on these big-rated shows. Now -- apart from some key big shows with demographics you can't get anywhere else -- advertisers can always go elsewhere, for the most part.

Dish is telling consumers that there is a ton of fractionalization in TV programming. You can go elsewhere on Dish for your TV fix – or, more specifically, you can go elsewhere, off the Dish programming service.