Opinion ID: 77316
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Analysis of EchoStar's Subscriber Base

Text: 18 Plaintiffs presented analyses of EchoStar subscriber lists at different points in time. The analyses were supervised and explained by plaintiffs' expert witness, Jules Cohen. 19
20 In an effort to dissuade the district court from issuing the original injunction in this case, EchoStar's CEO, Charles Ergen, made a formal pledge under penalty of perjury in September 1999. In that pledge, he promised that for each of the subscribers that had originally been signed up for EchoStar's distant network programming using the subjective PrimeTime 24 method, EchoStar would (1) determine if they were served or unserved using the ILLR method and (2) terminate all ineligible subscribers. To comply with this promise, EchoStar submitted a list of its 331,586 PrimeTime 24 subscribers to Decisionmark, an ILLR vendor, for an ILLR analysis. EchoStar received the analysis the following month. 21 The analysis revealed that of the 331,586 total subscribers signed up for distant network programming with EchoStar pursuant to the agreement with PrimeTime 24, the percentages of Grade A subscribers were 61% (ABC), 60% (CBS), 58% (Fox), and 60% (NBC). 15 These totals amount to more than 258,000 former PrimeTime 24 subscribers (approximately 78% of the total) who were predicted to receive a Grade A signal from at least one of the four networks. Contrary to Ergen's promise, the district court found no evidence that EchoStar terminated service to any of these subscribers for compliance-related purposes. CBS Broad., Inc., 276 F.Supp.2d at 1245-46. 22
23 The district court found that during the period in which EchoStar utilized the red-light/green-light methodology, it signed up a substantial number of subscribers in the ineligible red-light zip codes. For example, between November 1988 and March 1999 EchoStar signed up 62,374 red-light subscribers for CBS distant network programming and 63,979 red-light subscribers for Fox distant network programming. An ILLR analysis of this group of subscribers shows that 167,000 are predicted to receive a Grade B or better signal. 16 Of the CBS distant programming subscribers signed up during this period, 69% were predicted to receive at least a Grade B signal and 41% were predicted to receive a Grade A signal. Id. at 1242. 24
25 Along with its submission of PrimeTime 24 subscribers, EchoStar submitted a list of all of its distant network receiving subscribers as of September 1999. The results were no more encouraging. Of its 879,808 distant network subscribers, 53% were predicted to receive a Grade A signal for ABC, 51% for CBS, 48% for Fox and 52% for NBC. An additional 18% for ABC, 21% for CBS, 12% for Fox, and 27% for NBC were predicted to receive a Grade B signal. As of September 1999, 72% of EchoStar's distant network subscribers (630,000 subscribers), regardless of the compliance method used to enroll them, were predicted to receive a Grade A signal from at least one of the four networks. The district court found no evidence that EchoStar, despite receiving the analysis in October 1999, terminated any of the 630,000 Grade A subscribers for compliance reasons. Id. at 1245. 26
27 During the course of pre-trial discovery, EchoStar provided the plaintiffs with a list of its subscribers as of April 25, 2002. Plaintiffs submitted the list for ILLR analysis under Cohen's supervision. This analysis showed that hundreds of thousands of EchoStar's distant network programming subscribers are predicted to receive signals of Grade A or B. Of the 898,847 ABC subscribers, 50.9% (457,584) were predicted to receive a Grade B or better signal from an ABC station; 28.5% (255,980) of those were Grade A. Of the 864,494 CBS subscribers, 55.7% (481,659) were predicted to receive a Grade B or better signal from a CBS station; 28.2% (244,022) of those were Grade A. Of the 993,490 Fox subscribers, 38.7% (383,987) were predicted to receive a Grade B or better signal from a Fox station; 25.8% (256,741) of those were Grade A. Of the 867,240 NBC subscribers, 56.4% (489,315) were predicted to receive a Grade B or better signal from an NBC station; 29.6% (256,503) of those were Grade A. Id. at 1243. 17