Dish Network drops AMC, IFC, and Sundance, offers compelling argument for dropping Dish Network

By Sean O'Neal | May 4, 2012 | 6:38pm

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If you're a Dish Network subscriber, better enjoy this season of Mad Men because it could end up being the last one you watch through your TV: Dish has just announced that it will drop all of AMC's networks—which also include IFC, Sundance, and WeTV, in addition to its flagship—at the end of June. The decision came with the explanation that Dish took issue with AMC's "high renewal cost when compared to their low viewership," and definitely not the lawsuit filed by Cablevision in 2008 over Dish's dropping of the now-defunct VOOM HD channels, a lawsuit that became AMC's territory when the company was spun out of Cablevision last year. That lawsuit, which no one cared about until it threatened their stories, turned sour for Dish when a court recently turned down Dish's latest appeal to avoid being sanctioned for destroying evidence. Nevertheless, Dish says that its ongoing, $2.5 billion fight with AMC is "a separate matter," and that the timing of the loss of that appeal—which happened just last week—and this sudden decision that AMC costs too much to keep around is, apparently, just a coincidence.

In yet more unhelpful stuff that won't solve the Dish subscriber's problem of wanting to watch Breaking Bad on your TV like a normal person, Dish claimed it would add "alternative high-value channels… as replacements"—channels that will not, of course, have the specific programming you actually want to watch and are therefore not "replacements." It then also shrugged that shows such as Mad Men, The Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad are already "available to our customers through multiple other outlets such as Amazon.com, iTunes and Netflix" anyway. "So really, why would you even want to stick with Dish TV?" it did not realize it was saying, we guess.