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DN Earnings Up. Subscribers Down
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DN Earnings Up. Subscribers Down
Scott Greczkowski - The Satellite Dish
March 2, 2009
If you read my Friday edition of The Satellite Dish then today’s numbers from DN should have been no surprise to you.
I was not surprised at all to hear that DN lost over 100,000 customers in the last quarter of 2008. This is DN's largest and 3rd consecutive subscriber loss for DN. At least Charlie didn’t try blaming the loss on the economy and piracy as he did last time.
On the noon time earnings call Ergen sounded nervous with lots of “umm’s” being heard so many umm’s in fact I though I was listening to a Chase Carey call instead. You could tell at times that Charlie was trying to carefully choose his words but some of the things he said on today’s call had me once again yelling “what” at my computer.
One of the first comments that had me shaking my head is when Charlie said their goal for 2008 was “In 2008, our goal was to stop getting worse,” and then he said “This year we’re prepared to get better.”
I don’t know if Charlie look at his reports for the last 4 quarters, but obviously they haven’t finished getting worse yet.
Charlie should have grabbed the bulls by the horns and let shareholders know what he is planning on doing to make things at DN better. The floor was open for him to push his company ahead but he didn’t take it.
Another thing that had me screaming at my computer was when Charlie said, “I believe that we have the best video product out there.” And then went on to say “if consumers were omniscient and had a choice between us or our competitors for video I believe that they would pick our product more often then not.”
What? Has Charlie noticed that DaveTV has been having positive growth while his company has been having negative growth? Consumers have a choice in their competitors for video and they are not picking DN. That’s what the numbers show so what numbers has Charlie been looking at?
One thing I can agree with Charlie about is that their marketing needs a lot of work. If you have been reading my writings over the years you would know this is has been something I have been hounding DN about over the years. Charlie himself said this his marketing was making his company look like a “second tier” company.
One thing that Charlie needs to do is learn to spend money to make money. Instead of focusing on low price low quality commercials what he needs to do is go to the tops of mountains telling consumers that his product is the best. He has been doing it with the equipment but now he needs to do it with the complete service as well. He really needs to brand the DN brand name into people’s heads. Charlie needs to go and watch the movie “Field of Dreams” and heed the words that echo through the movie. “If you build it they will come!”
Yes Charlie can turn DN around, but will he open up the company wallet enough to make the company the world-class company it should be? That is the question that remains to be answered.
Another thing Charlie needs to fix is his customer service. It is time to close the foreign call centers and invest back here in the United States. Customers do not like calling for help and getting some guy name Sam who can no speak the English language. As I have seen from reports online, calls like this only get customers more frustrated, sometimes frustrated enough to cancel their service. Again this requires DN to open their wallet to make it happen. It should be noted that when all of DN’s customer service was based here in the United States DN use to win the customer service awards year after year? When the call centers went offshore the awards stopped flowing. That fact along should set off some alarms.
In the next edition we will look further into things and will talk about if the word “free” is a good word to gain new customers or not.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DN Earnings Up. Subscribers Down
Scott Greczkowski - The Satellite Dish
March 2, 2009
If you read my Friday edition of The Satellite Dish then today’s numbers from DN should have been no surprise to you.
I was not surprised at all to hear that DN lost over 100,000 customers in the last quarter of 2008. This is DN's largest and 3rd consecutive subscriber loss for DN. At least Charlie didn’t try blaming the loss on the economy and piracy as he did last time.
On the noon time earnings call Ergen sounded nervous with lots of “umm’s” being heard so many umm’s in fact I though I was listening to a Chase Carey call instead. You could tell at times that Charlie was trying to carefully choose his words but some of the things he said on today’s call had me once again yelling “what” at my computer.
One of the first comments that had me shaking my head is when Charlie said their goal for 2008 was “In 2008, our goal was to stop getting worse,” and then he said “This year we’re prepared to get better.”
I don’t know if Charlie look at his reports for the last 4 quarters, but obviously they haven’t finished getting worse yet.
Charlie should have grabbed the bulls by the horns and let shareholders know what he is planning on doing to make things at DN better. The floor was open for him to push his company ahead but he didn’t take it.
Another thing that had me screaming at my computer was when Charlie said, “I believe that we have the best video product out there.” And then went on to say “if consumers were omniscient and had a choice between us or our competitors for video I believe that they would pick our product more often then not.”
What? Has Charlie noticed that DaveTV has been having positive growth while his company has been having negative growth? Consumers have a choice in their competitors for video and they are not picking DN. That’s what the numbers show so what numbers has Charlie been looking at?
One thing I can agree with Charlie about is that their marketing needs a lot of work. If you have been reading my writings over the years you would know this is has been something I have been hounding DN about over the years. Charlie himself said this his marketing was making his company look like a “second tier” company.
One thing that Charlie needs to do is learn to spend money to make money. Instead of focusing on low price low quality commercials what he needs to do is go to the tops of mountains telling consumers that his product is the best. He has been doing it with the equipment but now he needs to do it with the complete service as well. He really needs to brand the DN brand name into people’s heads. Charlie needs to go and watch the movie “Field of Dreams” and heed the words that echo through the movie. “If you build it they will come!”
Yes Charlie can turn DN around, but will he open up the company wallet enough to make the company the world-class company it should be? That is the question that remains to be answered.
Another thing Charlie needs to fix is his customer service. It is time to close the foreign call centers and invest back here in the United States. Customers do not like calling for help and getting some guy name Sam who can no speak the English language. As I have seen from reports online, calls like this only get customers more frustrated, sometimes frustrated enough to cancel their service. Again this requires DN to open their wallet to make it happen. It should be noted that when all of DN’s customer service was based here in the United States DN use to win the customer service awards year after year? When the call centers went offshore the awards stopped flowing. That fact along should set off some alarms.
In the next edition we will look further into things and will talk about if the word “free” is a good word to gain new customers or not.