Dish’s Clayton Says CBS’s Moonves is a “Bully”

The Dish Network seems to be in trouble in trying to listen to consumers. The introduction of “Hopper,” which has “autohop” functions enabling subscribers skip commercials automatically while watching recorded shows, is under heavy attack by other media companies.

In a recent Bank of America Corp Conference, CBS Corp boss, Les Moonves threatened to remove CBS from Dish if Dish deploys Hopper on DVR. Moonves said, “If they want to continue down that line, then we will just not be on Dish. That’s what will happen.” Moonves told investors that media companies cannot spend millions on TV shows and stand by watching Dish helping to eliminate commercials.

Just one day after Moonves’ assertion, Dish Network CEO Joe Clayton said at an event in New York, “Let me say this to Mr. Moonves and the broadcasters, they would be well advised to tune into the consumer.” Clayton further added in an intervie, “Mr. Moonves feels that he can bully the consumers and that he can bully his programming partners. I don’t think that plays well.”

While Dish maintains consumers desperately need a system that provides them the choice to automatically skip commercials, media companies like CBS, Disney’s ABC, Comcast’s NBC, News Corp’s FOX, and others do not agree. They argue that Dish is undermining the key source of revenue of the network, which was advertising.

In May, there were lawsuits over Hopper, and in August, Fox asked a court to put a stop to Dish’s Hopper system of auto-hopping commercials. So far, the system only works with broadcast networks and does not affect ads on cable channels.

However, Dish is not in a mood to give way, and since July it has blocked out four of AMC Networks’ channels including the main AMC network. However, analysts say Dish would be hurt if it loses CBS.