• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, June 28, 2024

But they need to stay with the Dish Network service for two years.

One of the main advantages to streaming platforms in their earliest iterations was that in addition to the low cost -- around $10 a month (with no advertising messaging) --  subscribers could buy those platforms on a month-by-month basis, canceling and/or re-upping as they wished.

Analysts believe Dish Network is having a harder time competing with other legacy pay TV/communications companies that can offer an array of other communications products -- home broadband as well as mobile phone service.

Currently, Dish Network has 6.3 million subscribers -- in a significant downturn.

Looking to stem efforts around "churn" -- the volatility of consumers adding or deleting a service on a month-to-month basis -- Dish might be figuring a free addition of Netflix, perhaps the most popular and biggest streaming provider. could be just the ticket to at least give it some business and revenue stability.

Back in the fall of 2023, it was paving the way for a new kind of bundling by traditional pay TV providers.

Charter leveraged its linear broadcast and cable carriage deal with Walt Disney to also include Disney+ and ESPN+ streamers for its customers in its packages of networks.

At the same time -- while not moving back to the "contracts" that cable TV and other providers had for decades, to lock in consumers -- other pay TV providers do offer price discounts over specific time periods.

For instance, Charter’s Spectrum TV Select package, which includes Disney+,  is priced at $69.99 for the first 12 months.

This is not to say that all old-school cable TV packages are not fully returning to old ways (bundling and now contracts). but it does explain some gravitational pull still left to consider as legacy TV and pay TV businesses look to find steady profitability.