Lifetime Networks, known for its tear-jerker television movies, is running newspaper and TV ads asking viewers to ``dump DISH'' after EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network dropped the channels.
.......
The campaign was expanded today following ads yesterday that said EchoStar is depriving women of critical information. A contract dispute forced EchoStar, the No. 2 U.S. satellite-TV provider, to pull the Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network channels from its lineup, EchoStar said Jan. 1.
"We want to get back on the air at a fair and reasonable rate," [The Lifetime representative] said.
.....
Lifetime today ran radio, TV and print ads in cities including Orlando, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. Yesterday's newspaper ads, two full pages side-by-side, told viewers to ``Take Back Your Lifetime!'' The letter to EchoStar Chief Ergen says that by removing the channels, ``millions of women will not get the inspiration and support they need and deserve.''
EchoStar's Cicero offered to broadcast, at his company's expense, any valuable information or public service announcements to its viewers that they are missing by not watching Lifetime.
Brilliant move by Cicero, knowing that there is nothing of value which Lifetime broadcasts. Other than that one movie about the mom who had an autistic anorexic daughter and then lost her husband to the flesh eating bacteria while she herself was fighting a rare form of eye cancer -- that one moved me.
Recommendation: EchoStar (ticker: DISH) is clearly short Melodrama. Maybe you should be too.