DirecTV to merge with majority shareholder Liberty Entertainment
By Darren Murph 
posted May 4th 2009 9:52AM
posted May 4th 2009 9:52AM
Hmm, now isn't this interesting? Just months after Liberty Media reached out at the eleventh hour and rescued Sirius XM from imminent bankruptcy, it's now spinning off its entertainment division (Liberty Entertainment) and combining it with DirecTV (which Liberty already controls). We're told that the new Liberty Entertainment will hold 54 percent of DirecTV Group shares and 65 percent interest in the Game Show Network, not to mention three regional sports networks and a few other things not worth mentioning. The move is being made as the "John Malone-controlled vehicle looks to simplify its capital structure," and if all goes well, the paperwork should be completed by the end of the year. Oh, and so far as we can tell, DirecTV consumers won't even notice the shuffling going on behind the scenes.
next up... try and revist Dish / DirectTV merger?
Sirius/XM raised their prices after they merged, I really hope the FCC isn't stupid enough to allow a DirecTV/Dish Network merger.
No, not just NO, BUT HELL NO!
DishNetwork is an inferior service run by an inferior company.
Liberty owns them both.
yeah, no.
wait people still listen to the radio AND have satellite TV? Wow...I've been riding subways on the east coast way to long.
wait, people still enjoy getting raped monthly by local-cable-merger of the week?
DirecTV service is questionable lately. Non-HD channels are getting compressed into very poor quality pictures. Why should I pay for mediocre video on most channels? HD channels aside, I think the general programming channels (Non-HD) are better on dish. Take a look sometime and compare.
I am pretty sure I didn't get the game show channel before. Wanted to watch family feud for some reason a while back and noticed I didn't get the channel. Just tried it again this Sat and i have it now. I wonder if it has anything to do with this.
Also, the compression? I have DTV a friend has Dish. I notice poor quality on both. Sometimes mine is better, sometimes his. I might consider Dish if the interface wasn't so terrible. It's even worse than comcast's interface. Those people need to start doing useability testing and learn some interface design....not that DTV's is perfect. They at least seem to listen and make changes though. I usually see 3-4 good changes a year.
I've had DirecTV since about 2001, and I've always had GSN (which is what it's actually called, it's no longer Game Show Network).
I don't use DirecTV HD (call me crazy for not buying an HDTV) but my TV picture quality seems to be fine. My only complaint is that I've been too lazy lately to call them and order new receivers, I've actually had two of my current 3 since I got the service originally. It stormed a bit today and my signal never dropped, something I can't complain about.
So is there any possibility here of (finally) having both satellite radio and tv in a single package? Sirius' crappy tv lineup (I think it's like what like 10 channels?) could be augmented bigtime here for in-dash entertainment. I'm not just saying for the little tikes in the back seat since I wouldn't mind having some options in an RV or something along those lines.
So, if this has no effect on DirecTV consumers, then what exactly makes this interesting? I feel like I'm missing something.
So what will that mean if we are on Direct TV and have verizon as our provider for our com and our land line?? We have bundled service.