Gary Schanman, the former Charter and Cablevision executive who has led pay TV operations for Dish satellite TV and Sling TV since 2022, has exited, parent company EchoStar has confirmed to StreamTV Insider.
Also departing is Ajinkya “Jinx” Joglekar, senior VP of acquisition marketing.
“Gary and Jinx both resigned and will be pursuing new opportunities,” said EchoStar spokesman Ted Wietecha. “They built strong teams that are well positioned to serve our business and help us achieve our goals. We do not have more to share at this time.”
Dish Network satellite TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV jointly lost another 253,000 subscribers in Q4 and ended 2024 with just 7.78 million remaining customers — roughly half of what they had a decade ago. EchoStar’s pay unit has been floundering since DirecTV broke off the latest attempt to merge the two big U.S. satellite TV companies back in November.
Heavily indebted EchoStar, leveraged at 13x EBITDA, according to MoffettNathanson, has been using Dish and Sling TV as piggybanks to fund a wireless network buildout it’s likely going to end up abandoning. According equity analyst Craig Moffett, the company has stopped investing capital in its 5G network and it now must sell its wireless spectrum holdings to T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon to stave off bankruptcy.
As for Dish and Sling TV, they’re not the piggybanks they used to be — their joint revenue fell 5.4% to $2.7 billion in Q4, resulting in EchoStar’s worst quarter ever for consolidated cash flow.
But is it too late for new leadership to save these pay TV operations?
Early 2025 has marked a sort of new era of U.S. pay TV reinvention. Charter Communications believes it has reinvigorate linear video by adding a full gamut of premium subscription streaming services at no additional cost to customers.
DirecTV has totally revamped its product lines, largely forsaking satellite and focusing on lower-priced streaming skinny bundles built around “genres” like sports. Tune into any NBA playoff game and you can’t miss the aggressive advertising spend, full of commercials featuring celebrity-voice-infused pigeons, supporting the initiative. YouTube TV, meanwhile, has grown to an estimated 9.4 million subscribers and is on pace to lead the U.S. pay TV business next year.