Two C-level executives who oversaw various parts of Echostar’s subscription video businesses are no longer with the company, The Desk has learned.
Earlier this week, Group President of Video Services Gary Schanman and Ajinkya Joglekar were dismissed by Echostar executives as part of a broader restructuring of the company’s pay television businesses, two sources confirmed.
Schanman, who also served as an Executive Vice President, and Joglekar were informed of their dismissals on Wednesday, the sources said. Their executive biographies were removed from Echostar’s website on Thursday. Echostar has not made a public statement about the matter; certain social media profiles continue to list both executives as current Echostar employees.
Joglekar was hired by Dish to serve as its Senior Vice President of Marketing for the company’s low-cost streaming service, Sling TV. In that role, he was responsible for developing and executing marketing strategies to help Sling TV grow its service and device sales. He transitioned into his most-recent role two years ago, where his responsibilities included the same executions for Dish’s satellite service.
Schanman joined Dish in 2022 to oversee growth and strategies for Sling TV. One year later, he became the Executive Vice President and Group President of Dish’s video services business, where he developed and executed strategies for Sling TV and Dish. Last year, he remained with the company when Dish reunited with its then-former parent, Echostar.
Schanman was also responsible for effectuating support for peer pay TV service provider Fubo during its antitrust lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company over the entertainment giant’s plans to launch a standalone sports streaming service called Venu Sports. The crux of that lawsuit was that the company and its two partners, Fox and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), favored Venu by allowing it to sell access to ESPN, Fox Sports 1, TBS and TNT without having to bundle in entertainment and news channels.
By contrast, Fubo and Dish were required to carry and sell networks like CNN, Disney Channel and Discovery Channel as a condition of carrying highly-sought news networks. Fubo settled its lawsuit against Disney earlier this year.
Schanman disclosed “material information” about Dish’s deals with Disney and Fox in an affidavit filed during the Fubo lawsuit, according to a source familiar with the matter. He was authorized to disclose the information in the case, subject to a request that a judge seal the brief, which was approved.
Fubo settled the lawsuit earlier this year, after agreeing to merge their pay TV business with Disney. At the same time, other pay TV providers like Charter’s Spectrum TV and DirecTV have negotiated more-favorable distribution deals with broadcasters that allowed them to launch new packages that include access to network-owned streaming services like Disney Plus, while also reorganizing channels into lower-cost packages.
Dish and Sling TV have not benefitted from those changes: While DirecTV was renegotiating its distribution agreements with the goal of launching genre-based, streaming-inclusive bundles, Echostar executives were concocting a merger involving Dish, Sling TV and DirecTV that would have created a single satellite TV entity and one of the largest streaming pay TV providers in the country.
The merger was called off last November after Echostar failed to convince Dish’s creditors to accept a bond exchange offer. Two months later, DirecTV launched a genre-based package consisting of premium sports networks for $70 per month. It has since launched three other plans consisting of entertainment, news and Spanish-language channels, starting at $35 per month.
The price of DirecTV’s entertainment-based package undercuts Sling TV’s base programming package by $5 to $10 per month, depending on where a subscriber lives.
In February, Echostar reported Sling TV lost around 50,000 customers during the last three months of 2024, ending the year with around 2.09 million streaming subscribers — the same number it reported for the end of 2023. Like other pay TV companies, Dish and Sling TV typically experience higher seasonal churn during the first three months of the year once the National Football League’s season concludes.
Aggressive pricing from DirecTV, Charter and other peers has caused Dish and Sling’s seasonal churn to be higher this year, one source said. They declined to cite specific numbers, and refused to say whether Sling TV’s subscriber count had dipped below the 2 million mark. Echostar is expected to provide an update on its subscriber count during its next quarterly earnings report in May.
