Twenty, count them, twenty women showed up to protest Echostar’s dropping the Lifetime network. 20? That’s more of a meeting than a protest and it certainly doesn’t send much of a message to Echostar. I would think more than twenty people would show up to protest the closing of a Dunkin Donuts.

Denver councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth showed her complete lack of understanding of the media markets by saying: “We feel Dish is depriving women of shows they love.” Someone needs to tell Ms. Wedgeworth that Echostar is not a monopoly and does not have a franchise for Denver. If the 20 or so people who actually care about Lifetime are perfectly capable of switching to a different distribution platform that is willing to pay the 76% rate increase demanded by Lifetime. Speaking as someone who has basic cable and thus pays for Lifetime even though I do not watch it, I’m happy to see distributors draw the line with Lifetime. Hope it stays off the air. A la carte anyone?

photo credit

h/t: Ace of Spades

Update: Blogger Plus Ultra picked up on this important story and noted Lifetime’s lock on reruns of “The Golden Girls” that Dish customers will be missing. Ouch! Plus Ulta also got a gut-busting comment that we’ve reproduced below:

Oh, rats. And they were just about to show that movie where the new hubby, who was so handsome and seemed so sweet and such a great catch turns out to have raped and killed 3 previous wives but fortunately she and that cute detective that had been asking those disturbing questions about hubby both figured it all out at the same time and if he can just get across town to her house before hubby sneaks back from his “business trip”…..

I’ve seen that movie. It stars either Vallerie Bertanelli or Meredith Baxter Bernie.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 7:58 pm by Insider and is filed under How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.