I once have sat at the war room table in such a dispute. Typically a carrier has a weapon which it can use abet reluctantly ( because it can only be used once

I once have sat at the war room table in such a dispute. Typically a carrier has a weapon which it can use abet reluctantly ( because it can only be used once every few years ) -- it is dropping the multiple channels associated with the content provider. Since typically a carrier has a local monopoly on access, such drop impacts cash flow of the content provider, which needs the cash flow to create new content. The problem is that this weapon does not work against AT&T which owns DirectTV -- Dish would need to drop all AT&T controlled content a the worst possible time for AT&T - such as right before the elections ( CNN would take a major hit ) as well as channels such as TBS/TNT/etc, which may not be possible due to other contracts while betting that AT&T's campaign to switch Dish users to DirectTV won't be successful ( it will - there's really no difference between the two providers it is just a question of AT&T having the installation operation ready ) Dish is a dinosaur of the carriers - it has too many channels and no content to put on it. Its only long term play is heavy investment in creating its own programming. Even Netflix and Amazon realized it.