DirecTV, Dish to merge to create largest U.S. pay-TV provider

NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) — DirecTV and Dish have agreed to combine in a deal that will create the biggest pay-TV provider in the United States, according to a statement released on Monday.
Under the terms of the transaction, DirecTV will acquire Dish from its owner EchoStar Corp. for a nominal consideration of 1 U.S. dollar plus the assumption of about 9.75 billion dollars of Dish debt, said the statement. The deal is contingent upon Dish’s bondholders agreeing to take a haircut on the principal amount of the company’s debt of at least 1.568 billion dollars.
“DirecTV and Dish have flirted with merging on and off for two decades. While U.S. regulators sued in 2002 to block a previous attempt to combine, the TV landscape has changed dramatically since then,” said Bloomberg News in its report about the move.
“Twenty years ago, satellite providers brought TV to rural areas where cable wasn’t available. Today, many of those areas have access to broadband Internet and aren’t as reliant on satellite TV,” it noted.
At the same time, the rise of popular streaming services from the likes of Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video has eaten into the pay-TV industry’s revenues as tens of millions of consumers have canceled their services, according to Bloomberg. ■