Word: echostar
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...Colorado, hoping his fledgling service would score big in a land of tall mountains and bad TV reception. A stiff wind blew their trailer into a ditch, ruining the dish and leaving them with only one. As it turned out, one dish was enough. Ergen used it to build EchoStar, now the nation's second largest satellite-TV company...
...wily Ergen, a Tennessee native and a onetime professional gambler, isn't giving up. His initial offer gave shareholders an 18% premium (that bonus decreased when EchoStar stock fell on the news), an amount that forced Hughes' management to take notice...
...programming--sumo wrestling from Japan, I bet, or The Larry Sanders Show reruns--while I was stuck with $50-a-month basic cable plus HBO and no pay-per-view. Last week, I'm delighted to say, I found an excuse to get my own direct-broadcast satellite TV. EchoStar, the second-largest DBS provider in the U.S., has just rolled out a promising new product called the DISHPlayer, a satellite receiver with an integrated WebTV that lets you surf the Net, send e-mail, play video games and watch more TV shows than there are hours...
According to EchoStar, the DISHPlayer will evolve over time without your having to go out and buy a new one. The company uses the satellite to update the deck's software automatically. In the fall, for instance, it will turn all those DISHPlayers into digital VCRs, so that instead of just pausing shows, users will be able to store stuff for later playback. By the end of the year, an upgrade will turn the player into a jukebox, so that CD-quality music that's currently beamed down in real time can be stored for playing later over your stereo...
Murdoch is already looking for alternatives to the EchoStar deal. He has held exploratory talks about gaining a share of Primestar, a competing satellite venture owned jointly by several cable companies, including TCI and Time Warner. Last week Murdoch broached the subject in a phone call to Time Warner's vice chairman, Ted Turner (with whom he has been feuding publicly), and had a face-to-face meeting with chairman Gerald Levin. His overtures to link up with Primestar, however, were rebuffed...