Dish in Talks for Internet TV

Dish Network Corp. has approached several media companies about the possibility of licensing their TV channels for use on a new pay-TV service to be delivered over the Internet, rather than over Dish's satellite system.

Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen has raised the idea with multiple media companies as part of a broader effort to control rising programming costs. The programming wouldn't include sports channels in its most-basic tier of service. Sports channels are among the most expensive for cable and satellite operators to carry. In part, offering channels over the Internet could give Dish more flexibility to exclude channels whose existing contracts with Dish mandate that they appear on the satellite company's most-widely distributed tiers of service. To save money, the Dish service could also include an antenna to pick up over-the-air broadcasts of major broadcast TV stations, rather than paying them subscription fees, as many cable and satellite companies now do