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Lifetime urges dropping the Dish

Women's channel ends EchoStar talks

Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 23, 2006 at midnight

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Lifetime Television on Sunday took the latest swing in its dispute with EchoStar Communications' Dish Network, ending negotiations to get the female-oriented channel back on Dish. Instead, Lifetime vowed to escalate efforts to persuade customers to drop the satellite-television service.

The move is the latest salvo in the squabble between the two companies that began on New Year's Eve, when Douglas County-based Dish dropped Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network from its airwaves after both sides couldn't reach an agreement on programming rates for a new contract.

They've been in intermittent discussions, punctuated by public squabbling, ever since.

Lifetime "rejected an unfair and unreasonable 'take it or leave it' offer" from Dish, the network said in a statement.

The New York-based network also announced plans to intensify its "Switch From Dish" campaign, saying that Lifetime owners Hearst Corp. and The Walt Disney Co. "will apply their resources" to partnerships with rival DirecTV and cable companies to offer Dish customers incentives to switch. Lifetime spokesman Gary Morgenstein said the network will announce details of the incentives soon.

Dish said it's in talks with a number of other networks and will have a replacement for Lifetime by the end of the month.

"We have been unable to reach an agreement, even though we offered a number of options which were ultimately rejected by Lifetime," said Michael Neuman, EchoStar's president.

The dispute between Dish, the second-largest satellite-TV provider with 12 million customers, and Lifetime marks one of the longest spans in which a top-five basic cable channel has been pulled from a major pay-TV provider.

Last week, Dish announced it would replace Lifetime Movie Network with Oxygen Media, which positions itself as a hipper version of Lifetime, on Dish's 120-channel programming package.

Dish has said that Lifetime is seeking a 76 percent rate increase over three years, a figure that Lifetime disputes.

Lifetime says Dish wants the network to accept "a Draconian cut in rates that would be far below market value."

Lifetime said it hasn't closed the door yet on Dish, though, and would be "happy to entertain a reasonable proposal," Morgenstein said.