[urlybird]

Big shakeup at Directv


Sky Report is reporting that there has been a major shakeup at DirecTV, with many key executives given the boot on Tuesday. Full report below.


Source: Sky Report
http://www.skyreport.com/skyreport/d...20402.shtm#one


Key Execs Exit DirecTV


DirecTV told its employees Tuesday of big organizational changes for the satellite TV service, an effort that included the exit of several senior executives.


Key executive departures include Susan Collins and Larry Driscoll, both senior vice presidents who were members of the original DirecTV launch team. Collins oversaw marketing and advertising initiatives at DirecTV. Driscoll was known for his work on the company's customer service efforts, including telemarketing and customer activation.


Other executive departures include Rick McManus, Larry Lemoine, Michael Meltzer and Colin Schiller, according to an e-mail sent to DirecTV employees Tuesday obtained by SkyREPORT.


Larry Chapman, executive vice president of marketing/advertising and product development, will go to DirecTV parent Hughes Electronics in a new role supporting Eddy Hartenstein, chairman and CEO of DirecTV as well as corporate senior executive vice president of Hughes. Chapman will focus on activities at DirecTV Latin America and DirecTV Broadband, according to a separate statement released by DirecTV later in the day.


Due to the Chapman departure, and based on a review of operations, DirecTV also realigned its marketing, customer satisfaction and sales units. The changes, effective immediately, include the redeployment of units formerly in the marketing department into sales. DirecTV said it wants to tailor and align its marketing resources around two critical areas: customer acquisition and customer retention.


The employee e-mail said customer acquisition activities will be grouped under the sales, distribution and customer acquisition department, formerly sales and distribution, and will be led by Executive Vice President Steve Cox. All customer support, retention and upgrade activities will be housed within the customer satisfaction department, which will be led by Executive Vice President Bob Meyers.


The employee e-mail came from DirecTV President and COO Roxanne Austin and Hartenstein.

 

[magic123]

Directv..


In the coming years, Directv (and Dish) must have much more HD programming (as it comes available) or they will surely lose out to cable.

The biggest reason has been quality of picture for a person to change to satellite from cable. With digital/HD this advantage will probably fall along the wayside. Of course, the cost of programming is always important. But, in general, who has the most HD programming in the future will gain customers. Actually, both cable and satellite will have to battle 'free' OTA digital/HD as well. The next 5 years should prove most interesting and be rewarding to the consumer..let us hope.

 

[Don Landis]

Well, its about time those two did something besides play golf!


Maybe now whan I call up to add services to my account, some CSR won't take it upon himself to not only deny my request but also remove a service I had, effectively reducing what I was paying each month. (RA and EH)

 

[williak]

Well, at least they correctly identified the two areas critical to their survival. Without the merger and with cable deploying HD all over the place, customer acquisition and retention are going to be the hot spots. I sure as hell wouldn't want to work in either one!


Austin

 

[XFactor]

For a company, what is there BESIDES customer acquisition and retention? Everything revolves around these areas -- are they inferring the previous heads didn't realize this?

 

[Don Landis]

The real problem is they are run by committee, even at the top. Hughes needs to fire all the way up and put a dynamic leader in the position of president. One who can SEE the problems that are so obvious to those of us who are outside the forest. Why does Echostar have a growth rate in the past 4 years that has far exceeded DirecTV's growth. Why has DirecTV's growth stopped or slowed down to a crawl about 4 years ago? Why has dish not needed to spend millions on complete card swaps like DirecTV seems to think it does? Why does DishNetwork not seem to think it needs to have two people with two work stations for every job, especially in upper management, like DirecTV seems to think it does?


DBS sells a product that sells itself. If the CSR's don't have the products people want, they can't sell them especially if those products are offered by the competition. When we ask for a product of DirecTV what answer do we get? We get the answer that HDTV is too expensive and too hard to do and is under negotiation, while their competitor simple puts it on the air and sells it to us. DirecTV is very lucky to have many on this forum dedicated to defend them to the end for their bad decisions. I don't know why they do that but they do. Personally, I know DirecTV doesn't need and has not asked me for my support. They offer a line of services and make it difficult in some cases to purchase them. They, in the past 4 years have not worked hard at all to keep me as a paying customer happy. Dish network as their only competitor has! DirecTV has one big product that I can see aids them in customer retention and that is NFL Sunday Ticket and a few other sports package contracts. I think without that they would be dead meat!

IMO, they should lower the season pricing on these packages, allow subscription to them as a la carte and and use them for attracting the Dish Network and cable customer. If they had anything else unique, that too, but I don't think they do besides HDNet for free and that is not the savior for the numbers they are looking for.

 

[John_D]

Quote:

Originally posted by Don Landis DirecTV is very lucky to have many on this forum dedicated to defend them to the end for their bad decisions. I don't know why they do that but they do.

I simply choose them because I don't want to put up two dishes. The quality of the receivers comes into play but is not as important.

 

[HughScot]

All Hughes is doing is thinning the ranks so they will be more able to dump the company which are their marching orders from GM. They have to cut expenses to make them more attractive to potential buyers.

 

[mikey mo]

Don:


I agree with you to a point. The 6000 receiver is simply not a user friendly device as many have stated in this forum.


When Dish gets a receiver as friendly and simple as the E-86 I will cancel D*.

 

[Don Landis]

Mikey Mo-
"The 6000 receiver is simply not a user friendly device as many have stated in this forum. "


I've read a few of those statements and since I have one as well as a few other receivers, I would say the ones who wrote those reports probably would say the same thing about tieing their shoes(not a user friendly device). LOL! I bought the 6000 specifically because it was so user friendly, my wife and daughter operate it without my guidance or prior instruction. They do not bother with learning the details of operating my HT like I have.

Anyway, I was referring to the program packages as to what DBS offers, not the receiving hardware.