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The Justice Department took the rare step earlier this month of moving to dismiss a $3.3 billion civil fraud lawsuit against Dish Network — months after founder Charlie Ergen and his wife donated more than $113,000 to President Biden’s re-election campaign late last year. Ergen, a former professional poker player who helped launch what was then called EchoStar Communications in 1980, has battled the federal fraud claim for nearly a decade. But the Tennessee native saw his luck change shortly after he and spouse Candy contributed $100,000 to Biden’s super PAC and maxed out with matching $6,600 donations to the...

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) -- EchoStar Corp. will buy satellite Internet services company Hughes Communications Inc. for about $1.34 billion so it can boost its ability to transport data and video via broadband, the company said Monday. The value is based on Hughes' 22 million outstanding shares. EchoStar, which makes equipment for cable, telecom and satellite TV providers, said the deal is worth $2 billion including debt, which the company said it will refinance.

Story Published: Aug 10, 2010 at 7:54 AM CDT Story Updated: Aug 10, 2010 at 1:12 PM CDT SNIPPET: "SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Viewers are calling the KY3 Newsroom and posting information on our KY3 Ozarks Today Facebook page about getting the wrong channels on Dish Network on Tuesday morning. Some of the channels are apparently in Chinese, Arabic and other languages." SNIPPET: "UPDATE On Tuesday, August 10, 2010 12:24 PM, KY3 received an official statement from Dish Network regarding the issue. “Starting at approximately 3:30 a.m. MDT, satellite uplink provider, EchoStar, experienced an equipment failure associated with a primary video...

WASHINGTON - A three- judge appeals court panel signaled Thursday that it is likely to rule at least partly in favor of TiVo Inc. in its patent dispute with Douglas County-based EchoStar Communications EchoStar is seeking to overturn a lower court decision last year that ruled the satellite broadcaster had infringed on patented TiVo technology that allows viewers to record one program while watching another. The court awarded TiVo $89.6 million in damages. TiVo sued EchoStar in 2004, alleging that its digital video recorders infringed on TiVo's "time warp" technology. TiVo, based in Alviso, Calif., pioneered digital recorders that allow...

Colorado's two U.S. senators have asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate a dispute between DIRECTV and EchoStar over network channels. News Corp., DIRECTV's parent, last week asked a federal court to stop EchoStar from providing 'distant' network signals to nearly one million subscribers. The signals, which originate from New York and Los Angeles, include both analog and High-Definition TV feeds. EchoStar says it will pay $100 million to local stations to settle the nine-year-old legal battle over 'distant' network TV signals. The local stations are concerned that EchoStar's subscribers will watch the national signals instead of their feeds. However,...

Shares of America’s #2 satellite television provider, EchoStar Communications, have hit 17-month highs in recent days amid speculation that leading rival, DirecTV Group Inc., could try to purchase the company. Such a merger would likely face regulatory and antitrust hurdles, but many analysts believe that these problems would be relatively easy to overcome. After all, the combined entity could be a strong competitor in the triple play communications industry, now increasingly polarized between cable and telecom carriers. The decision to merge with DirecTV would rest solely with Charlie Ergen, EchoStar’s Chairman, CEO, and co-founder, who currently controls more than...

Excerpt - NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Satellite TV providers EchoStar Communications Corp. (DISH) and DirecTV Inc. (DTV) signed five-year distribution agreements with WildBlue Communications Inc., a satellite-broadband provider, to provide Internet access targeting rural consumers. ~ snip ~

TiVo Won http://www.fool.com/news/mft/2006/mft06051143.htm By Tim Beyers (TMF Mile High) 05/11/2006 When I read Wednesday that News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox brokered a deal to make available several of its shows at Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes music store, my mind immediately went to TiVo(Nasdaq: TIVO). "So, this is how it ends," I thought. What I mean is that the bigwigs at the networks know that live TV, save for sports events, is over. TiVo won. Not that couch potato surfing will go away immediately, of course. Television advertising remains a $100 billion-plus business, after all. But The Carmel Group reports that...

Lawyers for TiVo Inc. were expected to tell a federal court jury Wednesday that satellite-TV broadcaster Dish Network stole the technology used in TiVo's popular device for recording and replaying live television. Lawyers for EchoStar Communications Corp., the parent of Dish Network, planned to argue that their client didn't infringe on TiVo's patent for a ``multimedia time warping system'' and instead invented their own digital video recorder.[snip]TiVo changed the way many Americans watch TV and made the company name a verb for recording programs. It has never translated its status in pop culture into profits, however. The company has lost...

The U.S. military is to beam its own news coverage to millions of Americans. Moving on from its phase of embedding journalists, or as some would say, 'a policy of restricting and contolling the flow of information,' the Pentagon will now produce and disseminate the news itself. It will be beamed to the public at no charge. The service will emanate from what is known as the Pentagon Channel, an internal public relations television unit within the Department of Defense. It was set up nine months ago. The government-run TV service will be channeled to the public through EchoStar Communication's...

A Russian Proton launch vehicle placed the AMC-15 satellite into orbit this morning, marking the ninth mission of the year for International Launch Services (ILS). The Proton lifted off at 3:23 a.m. today in Baikonur (5:23 p.m. Thursday EDT, 21:23 Thursday GMT), with spacecraft separation from the Breeze M upper stage nearly seven hours later, at 10:18 a.m. (12:18 a.m. EDT, 4:18 GMT). ILS is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [NYSE:LMT] and Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center of Russia. ILS markets and manages the missions on the Proton vehicle and on the American Atlas rocket. “We thank...

DENVER -- Ending a fee dispute that left millions of DISH satellite television customers without several popular channels, EchoStar Communications Corp. agreed early Thursday on a new contract with CBS parent Viacom Inc. EchoStar pulled the plug on Viacom programming Tuesday, leaving up to 9 million DISH Network viewers nationwide without Viacom channels including MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BET and Nickelodeon. The dispute also left as many as 2 million DISH viewers without CBS shows when EchoStar pulled the network's programing in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis and Dallas. DISH subscribers...

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - Satellite TV giant EchoStar Communications Corp. pulled the plug on MTV, Nickelodeon and CBS affiliates in more than a dozen cities early Tuesday in an escalating legal dispute with Viacom Inc. over the price of programming. As many as 9 million customers of EchoStar's DISH Network nationwide were affected, including 1.6 million who watch CBS programming in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities. The move that could threaten their ability to watch, among other things, the March Madness (news - web sites) college basketball tournament. "We are willing to negotiate as soon as Viacom is...

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - Satellite television provider EchoStar Communications Corp. pulled the plug on MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and local CBS affiliates early Tuesday in a contract dispute with Viacom Inc. over the price of programming. An estimated 1.6 million customers on EchoStar's DISH Network across the nation were affected, a move that could threaten their ability to watch, among other things, the March Madness college basketball tournament. In place of Viacom programming, some customers in the Denver area saw a message from EchoStar saying the multimedia giant was asking an unreasonable amount for its programming. A statement from Viacom after...

EchoStar complains about Loral to bankruptcy court NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Satellite television service EchoStar Communications Corp. (NasdaqNM:DISH - News) on Wednesday accused bankrupt satellite maker Loral Space and Communications Ltd. (OTC BB:LRLSQ.OB - News) of withholding information EchoStar needs to decide whether to make an offer to buy the company. EchoStar, which operates the No. 2 U.S. satellite TV service Dish Network, said in a filing with bankruptcy court that Loral was not letting it see "certain due diligence information" for certain assets and refused to let it see any information on parts of the company. "EchoStar...

NEW YORK -- EchoStar Communications Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen, recently blocked by federal regulators from acquiring his main rival in the U.S. satellite-television market, has been talking with long-standing adversary Rupert Murdoch as well as Liberty Media Corp. about possibly selling his company, industry officials familiar with the contacts told The Wall Street Journal. There haven't been any formal negotiations, Mr. Ergen isn't commenting on his motives and it isn't clear what response these preliminary feelers have sparked. EchoStar currently has a market capitalization of $12.4 billion and debt of about $5.7 billion. The surprising twist could indicate that...

In the aftermath of its failed merger with Echostar, Hughes Electronics says it is looking to get out of its DirecWay satellite Internet service. "Satellite delivered Internet is a costly business model and we would only be able to continue in this business if the merger had gone through," said George Jamison, Hughes spokesman. He noted that DirecWay "loses money," and that while strategic decisions concerning the future of the DirecWay service have not been made, they "will in the not-so-distant future." "The challenge for DirecWay is the upfront hardware costs and the monthly service charges make it tough...

DETROIT - Hughes Electronics Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., and EchoStar Communications Corp. terminated their proposed merger of the nation's two biggest satellite television operations, the companies announced Tuesday. The government had taken steps to block the deal, and the companies said they called it off because it couldn't be completed within the time allowed. Hughes owns DirecTV, while EchoStar runs the Dish Network. The planned merger would have created a single powerhouse satellite TV service with 18 million subscribers. As part of the termination settlement, EchoStar has paid Hughes $600 million in cash, and Hughes, a General Motors...

WASHINGTON, Oct 31, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- The proposed merger of EchoStar Communications Corp. and Hughes Electronics Corp., creating the nation's largest subscriber television company, could untangle in a messy and expensive breakup following the government's suit to scuttle the deal. The companies issued statements on Thursday that they were considering their options to salvage the $22.6 billion deal. The government said the deal would eliminate competition between the two largest satellite television companies and hurt consumers. Only last week EchoStar offered to give rival Cablevision Systems Corp. a satellite frequency that would allow the company to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - EchoStar Communications Corp. was dealt a potentially fatal blow on Thursday in its $16.2 billion bid to acquire rival satellite television provider Hughes Electronics when U.S. communications regulators moved to block the deal. The Federal Communications Commission unanimously voted to refer the deal to an administrative law judge for review -- a process that could take months -- and gave little hope that any remedies proposed by the companies would resolve their concerns. "Based on the record, the commission cannot find that this merger is in the public interest," FCC Chairman Michael Powell said at a...