As the days tick down to it being permanently dropped, Lifetime Television Tuesday placed an ad criticizing EchoStar Communications Corp. for offering 46 sports networks and seven pornography channels.
As part of an ongoing ad campaign, Lifetime ran a second full-page ad in The New York Times. The latest ad’s headline pointed out that while EchoStar’s Dish Network has spots for various sports and porn services on its lineup, Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network “can’t make the cut.”
The ad charged, “It’s obvious that Dish doesn’t value women.”
Over the weekend, testy contract negotiations between Lifetime and EchoStar officials once again broke down. Lifetime and LMN have been off Dish since New Year’s Day after both sides failed to reach a contract renewal. The distributor and programmer are arguing over the rate increase Lifetime is seeking.
In response to Lifetime’s ad Tuesday, EchoStar reiterated its allegation that the programmer is playing politics while the issue at hand has to do with economics.
“They are trying to pressure us, using politics, when they should be dealing with economics,” EchoStar spokesman Marc Lumpkin said.
He added that Dish offers a number of channels with programming for women, noting, “Not any one person can get 46 sports channels, and a lot of women enjoy sports.”
EchoStar has already replaced LMN with Oxygen, and the direct-broadcast satellite provider said Sunday that it plans to permanently replace Lifetime at the end of the month.
On Monday, EchoStar said it was willing to offer Lifetime a la carte free-of-charge to customers who requested it. EchoStar said it would pay Lifetime the last rate the programmer proposed for the network for each of those a la carte subscribers.
Lifetime has turned down Dish’s a la carte proposal, saying that all of EchoStar’s subscribers should be getting the women’s channel.
Lifetime’s ad urges Dish subscribers to switch to DirecTV Inc. or their local cable operator.
Lifetime and Oxygen also put out press releases touting their scores in the “2005 Beta Research Corp. Cable Operator Carriage” study, released Tuesday.
Lifetime Real Women -- which Lifetime wanted Dish to launch -- ranked No. 1 in interest among cable operators that plan to add one or more channels to digital cable this year.
And Oxygen ranked No. 1 as the network cable operators are most interested in adding to their analog or expanded-basic offerings by the end of the year.
