Officials at Dish Network and DirecTV are downplaying reports of a possible merger of the two satellite television platforms, according to several sources who spoke with The Desk on background this week.
Over the weekend, financial news outlet Bloomberg published a story that suggested the two companies were holding preliminary discussions about a possible merger — something each company has tried before, with little success.
The current discussions are “in the early stages,” according to Bloomberg, which cited sources who “asked not to be identified because the information is private.”
A spokesperson for DirecTV said the company doesn’t “comment on rumors and speculation,” adding that reports about “potential transactions involving DirecTV and Dish are nothing new.”
The last time such a rumor was reported, it was 2019, and Bloomberg was the news outlet to break the story, with the information again attributed to anonymous sources.
In this case, it appears the information for Bloomberg’s weekend scoop came from some at Dish Network, a high-level DirecTV executive told The Desk over the weekend. The executive, who agreed to speak with The Desk on condition of anonymity, said they were “not aware of any conversations with Dish” about a merger, adding they would “definitely be in those meetings” at some point.
The executive said the conversation was “probably casual banter…that someone at Dish decided was newsworthy.” Efforts to reach Dish for comment were not successful.
Shares of Dish’s parent company Echostar traded 7 percent higher on Monday on Bloomberg’s report, while shares of AT&T were up 2 percent. AT&T maintains a majority ownership stake in DirecTV after spinning off the satellite company into a separate business in 2021.
DirecTV and Dish have explored a possible tie-up several times over the past two decades. In 2002, the companies announced a formulated plan to combine their businesses, only to face intense scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice, which ultimately did not give the plan a nod of approval. Since then, the companies have held occasional discussions about a merger, though the talks have not materialized into anything substantial.
That isn’t to say mergers involving satellite TV companies has never happened. DirecTV was able to grow into the largest satellite pay television company in part because of two key acquisitions in 1999: One involving Hubbard Broadcasting’s U.S.S.B., and the other that saw DirecTV buy out Comcast and TCI’s stake in Primestar. (In 2002, Comcast bought TCI’s cable TV business from AT&T.)
But a tie-up between the largest commercial satellite TV broadcasters in the country has typically faced opposition from regulators, who were concerned that such a merger would cede too much control to a single large entity, depriving consumers of viable alternatives to regional cable systems.
Today, those concerns are largely assuaged by the uptick in streaming services that replicate the cable TV experience — from wallet-conscious options like Frndly TV and Philo to sports-inclusive products like YouTube TV and Fubo — which have increased consumer choice and generated more competition in the premium TV space.
There is some precedent for a merger between two major satellite companies: In 2007, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio announced their intention to combine into a single business, telling regulators that the survival of both companies depended on a merger because of increased competition posed by a number of different mediums, including Internet radio services like Pandora. The U.S. Department of Justice gave its nod of approval to the merger the following year. The combined SiriusXM acquired Pandora in 2018.
