• by Thom Forbes , June 4, 2015

Dish Network and T-Mobile US are talking deal in a combination that would link the No. 2 satellite TV enterprise with the No. 4 — and hard-charging — mobile operator, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Dish CEO Charlie Ergen would be chairman of the combined entity; T-Mobile CEO John Legere would be CEO. 

“A deal between Dish and T-Mobile is akin to two people who hook up because they are the last ones left in the bar at closing time,” writes Re/code’s Ina Fried. “Both had their eye on other combinations but saw their efforts foiled. And more than anything, neither company wants to go home alone.”

Less lustfully, the deal — said to be in a “formative” stage — would “address major strategic issues for both sides,” write the WSJ’s Ryan Knutson, Thomas Gryta and Shalini Ramachandran. 

“Dish lacks the robust broadband Internet service that cable companies can lean on to offset a declining TV business. It also has amassed billions of dollars of wireless licenses but hasn’t built the cellular network needed to put them to use,” they point out. Meanwhile, “Dish’s wireless licenses would give T-Mobile a path to boosting the capacity of its network.”

Neither company would comment on the report, according toUSA Today’s Jessica Guynn.

The combination “makes perfect sense,” Jan Dawson, an independent technology analyst for Jackdaw Research tells Guynn. “Given the increasing consolidation in the market, T-Mobile and Dish were in danger of becoming the lone single-service providers left in the market, with everyone else combining TV, broadband, and wireless.”

Indeed, the “talks come amid a dramatic period of consolidation in the telecommunications industry. One of T-Mobile's larger rivals, AT&T, is seeking to merge with Dish's biggest rival, DirecTV,” writes Brian Stelter for CNNMoney. “And just last week, Charter Communications announced a plan to merge with Time Warner Cable, creating a more muscular competitor to the No. 1 cable company, Comcast.”

The fact that T-Mobile and Dish are courting “reflects the increasing need of content producers and content distributors to gain scale and size in order to stay competitive in an industry that has been disrupted by the rise of digital technology,” observesVariety’s Brian Steinberg.

It would also brig together two very colorful characters under one corporate roof.

“T-Mobile's CEO Is The Profanity-Spewing Shock Jock Of Corporate America. Is This The Future Of Leadership?” asks the subhed of Danielle Sack’s revealing profile of Legere for Fast Company earlier this week.

“With his wave of shoulder-length brown hair and mild paunch protruding from what was once an athletic physique, Legere looks like he might have been a member of Kiss rather than a lifelong telecom executive,” Sacks writes. “Once he starts talking, he becomes the anthropomorphized embodiment of the tall can of Red Bull in his left hand.”

But in the end, Legere’s “antics” are working. T-Mobile has come back from “near death,” with revenues for the first quarter up 13% over the year before and it’s now in a virtual tie with Sprint for customers. “Authenticity of the sort Legere projects is what moves merchandise,” offers Sacks. “Even if it’s just an act.”

A Reuters report reminds us that the “Uncarrier,” as its campaign would have it, “has turned around years of subscriber losses with cut-price deals, savvy marketing and well-publicized wireless plans in recent quarters. While these initiatives have led to customer gains, they have pressured T-Mobile's margins.”

Ergen is quite the personality himself, with the New York Post's Claire Atkinson referring to him as “the 61-year-old mercurial spectrum hoarder” when he announced he would resume CEO duties at Dish in February, following Joe Clayton’s retirement, after a hiatus on the chairman’s throne. But, Atkinson writes, the Dish founder “never stopped calling the shots during his four years on the back bench executing a more strategic role.”

A cover story in the April 12, 2013, issue of the Hollywood Reporter dubbed Ergen as “The Most Hated Man in Hollywood” — quite the distinction! — with a bit of retouching to a portrait that left him looking like Satan himself.

The year before, Dish had introduced the Hopper — “a proprietary DVR service that allows consumers to ‘AutoHop,’ or watch the entire primetime lineup of the broadcast networks commercial-free without even having to fast-forward through ads,” Eriq Gardner writes.

"Some people are averse to change, but the advertising model is going to change with or without the Hopper," he told analysts, Gardner reports. “What we're saying to the broadcasters is, ‘There's a way for you not to put your head in the sand.’”

Ergen said he’d remain as Dish’s CEO until he “finds someone smarter,” Atkinson reported when he resumed those duties. Looks like he may have done just that. Perhaps even brasher, too.