Rich Fiscus
27 Sep 2007 19:52
Sling Media co-founder and CEO Blake Krikorian is excited about the company's future after the announcement last week that the company is being acquired by Dish Network parent company Echostar Communications.
As a subsidiary of Echostar, and potentially the flagship brand for a new division of the satellite provider that would concentrate exclusively on hardware, Sling should have access to a fair amount of technology already developed for Dish Network. He says "EchoStar has built a lot of their own products, deployed more DVRs than anyone in the world. All that software and hardware they built themselves. It's pretty interesting technology for us to leverage into some of our solutions." He adds "They're telling us to 'Go, run like crazy, and do what you're doing, and let us know how we can help you. And by the way, here's a bunch of technology.'"
While Krikorian envisions enhancements to Dish Network's own set-top boxes to take advantage of features from the highly successful Slingbox line, the main focus for Sling will continue to be interoperability with a wide variety of receivers and signals.
He sees the deal as a good fit for Sling because he believes Echostar is serious about developing hardware, describing CEO Charlie Ergen as "an entrepreneur, not a corporate suit," and saying that he believes the company is commited to developing new technology.
Besides the obvious financial and technology advantages for Sling, the Echostar buyout may offer them protection from potential legal problems from their critics, which include Major League Baseball and cable giant HBO. "If anything, (HBO and MLB will) look at (the Slingbox) with more comfort and more positively than they looked at it before. The fact of the matter is, going to EchoStar versus another technology or software company is...they know EchoStar. EchoStar pays them hundreds of millions of dollars annually," said Krikorian. EchoStar "values content. They make money by selling premium content."
Source: CNet News