HBO Blackout Can’t Stop Dish from Gaining

Who needs HBO? Dish Network managed to buck the cord-cutting trend in the third quarter that has afflicted the rest of the pay-TV sector, reeling in 148,000 net TV subscribers in the period.

The gains at Dish come even as the provider’s satellite TV and Sling TV services have been without WarnerMedia’s HBO since October 2018 following a dispute over carriage terms.

Dish in particular surely benefited from AT&T’s disastrous Q3 results for its pay-TV biz, in which the telco’s DirecTV and other video businesses lost a whopping 1.4 million subscribers. One interpretation of Dish’s results is that “the utter meltdown at DirecTV in Q3… inevitably benefited Dish Network. Where else were they going to go?” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a research note.