Satellites Dish out Challenge to Cable: Price Cuts Lure Channel Surfers

Abrahms, Doug, The Washington Times (Washington, DC)

It's cable vs. the dish, and the dish is winning.

An upstart satellite-television company slashed the price of its dishes to $200 last month, spurring sales and escalating a war for market share with the cable-TV industry.

Dish Network, a unit of Echostar Communications Corp. of Englewood, Colo., offers consumers a satellite dish and more than 40 channels of programming - including CNN, ESPN and the Disney Channel - for $500 a year. The pizza-size dish itself now costs about the same as a VCR.

"I think you're going to see sales skyrocket after this," said David Bross, editor of Satellite News. "Clearly, this is not good news for cable."

More than 1.7 million direct-broadcast satellite dishes have been sold in the United States since they were …

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Publication information: Article title: Satellites Dish out Challenge to Cable: Price Cuts Lure Channel Surfers. Contributors: Abrahms, Doug - Author. Newspaper title: The Washington Times (Washington, DC). Publication date: September 4, 1996. Page number: 1. © 2009 The Washington Times LLC. COPYRIGHT 1996 Gale Group.

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