♪ betty: he is the country boy millionaire of dish network, charlie ergen. for the first time, he weighs in on the seismic shift taking place on television, his plans to be the next big wireless and why he is looking to merge with that guy, the t-mobile ceo john ledger. but the famously tough boss faces questions about his management style. charlie: we have high expectations and if you are not somebody who is not used to high

expectations, you're going to be in trouble. betty: join me and charlie ergen as he dishes it out here at "titans at the table." hello, i am betty liu. welcome to "titans at the table." dish network ceo charlie ergen has been known as something of a renegade, being thrown out of casinos for counting cards to selling satellites out of his car in colorado. in the process of starting his company, he has become one of the richest man in america, worth nearly $20 billion. he stepped out of the spotlight in 2011. just four years later, the founder is back in the hot seat. as television undergoes another revolution, video moving on to your second screen. like the satellite tv business, ergen wants to be at the

forefront of this change by creating a new over the top product called sling tv. he wants to buy assets of what he says can be used to build a legitimate competitor against at&t. when we first set down for our toerview, i asked gergen describe his new frontier. charlie: people are looking more for what they want to watch and not paying for what they don't want to watch. they want to watch their tv everywhere. part of that is the technology ott, the top is it allows customers to do that. the second reservation is wireless. there is only two ways to do this, one is through the wire and the other way is through wireless, and we started that about five years ago.

we wanted to be part of that conductivity revolution. the best place to do this in the marketplace is in wireless technology. betty: unless you have accumulated $50 million or $60 million in wireless assets? charlie: it is only really worth money when you put it to use and when you ultimately build a business around it and get discounted cash flows. of course that is what we are looking forward to the future. betty: charlie, does this remind you at all, what you just said the transformation of television , and the on boarding of so many people wirelessly, does this remind you of the early days of satellite television? charlie: it does. back in the early days, people wanted to pay the premium for

the satellite dish, and the bundles were smaller, the view was better, and the signal quality was more reliable, it was a better picture, and so now people are asking the question, why would you pay for ott and the similarities? ott eliminates some of the pain points. in so many homes and they don't pay for television as we know it. they pay for netflix and we take away some of those paying points with ott. you do not have a contract, you do not have equipment to buy. you can go on vacation and not pay for a subscription and put it on hold for a month. it is immediate. you can watch the nba finals tonight and you don't have to wait for an installer.

betty: you don't have to take off of work and wait for the cable guy. charlie: we have several many packs that you can add onto if you want to, including showtime and hbo, so it attracts a lot of people, particularly younger people who are not paying for tv . we have a long way to go. we are not perfect yet. live tv is really hard, and we are doing things like ad insertion, so it reminds me a lot when we started --, satellite television, and we had all kinds of technical problems. we just knocked them down one by one by one. we occasionally have

a technical problem today. betty: but obviously you resulted then. charlie: we have resolved most of them, but we had a choice to make, it was either get out there and do what we don't know or wait and try to be perfect. we got out there probably a little ahead of our skis but i , think it will pay off for us now and for the people who are watching, you will have a better experience today. betty: you have all of your cards close to your chest right now. you have your wireless assets, you have sling tv, you are looking at various options, so when are you going to make your play? charlie: i think, we have told people what we are going to do, we have been saying virtually the same thing for five years, that our dream would be to use our spectrum to really enhance the way that people connect and provide competition in the wireless business. and not just in the wireless business at the broadband business as well. if it is properly deployed, we

can go to a lot of homes without wireless connection and give them cable. that provides meaningful competition where there is not much today. i think we can do those things. how we do those things -- it is not that we haven't played our cards. we don't know. we do not know exactly the best way to play that because you have to find companies that have a like-minded strategy. you like to have companies that want to move the same direction that you want to do it. you want to make sure that it is economic to your shareholders to move in a direction for the company. we are not that big a company. it is not like we can pick the phone up and make things happen. i think there are much bigger companies. betty: i think anybody would take a call from charlie ergen. charlie: i think anybody would take our call, but certainly the wireless industry is controlled by two companies today. there are 20 times bigger than we are. they are going to make their moves and do their things and people are probably going to react to that.

sometimes, you have to be ready to move when you see other things that happen in this industry. one thing we know for sure is the spectrum is valuable and we will put it to good use, and we want to make sure it provides the best competition and the best product. betty: could charlie ergen's next play the merger with t-mobile? i will ask him if all of those reports make sense when "titans at the table" returns. ♪

♪ betty: welcome back to "titans at the table" and my conversation with media titan charlie ergen. for years, ergen has been buying up gold. the wireless kind. he has bid in several auctions for wireless spectrum which are basically the airwaves that transmit your phone calls or video to your devices. analysts estimate ergen is sitting on almost $50 billion worth of this gold. this has led many to wonder if he is on the cusp of merging with a wireless carrier, maybe t-mobile? he would not confirm the rumors but i asked him if it would be logical for the two companies to team up. charlie: i think there are a lot of positives to that. if there are willing participants but they have done a fantastic job being the upstart company. john's team has captured the imagination of the public in terms of attacking the paying

points we have in the wireless industry. their network is similar to our spectrum position. so it fits in that sense and of course obviously, they will need more spectrum. those things make sense. i think there are things that don't make as much sense. obviously, controlled by a german company that has strategic initiatives in europe and the u.s. they may not be in a position where they want to do anything. we have other options that may be more attractive to our board and shareholders. so i think there is a number of options out there. certainly, t-mobile is an option. betty: speaking of the german owner, there are reports one of the reasons why a deal might not happen with t-mobile is they do not value dish shares as highly as you value them. there is a disconnect. where do you think dish should

really be trading at? charlie: i never can predict the stock market. i would say that in the long run, our shares are undervalued, and i think the spectrum value we have -- we are probably undervalued with the spectrum position we have but we have to prove it to the marketplace. betty: undervalued by how much? charlie: i don't know. i can only speak as a shareholder. i have not sold any shares recently. [laughter] charlie: i still have the shares i had when we started the company. i believe in the long-term life of the company. this is our 35th year in business and i think our best days are ahead of us. i think it is how you can take advantage of the things that may happen in the marketplace to grow your business and you have to have a team that can adapt to change and be willing to change and i think we have that. our short-term focus is a merge with at&t, directv, a merger, if approved, we want to see what the conditions -- we publicly have not opposed the merger but we have seen -- said that there

needs to be meaningful conditions, particularly protecting consumers for broadband rights. there is incentive for new competitors. us and other companies will want us to be higher. it is what stands in the way of real competition, the fact they control the vast majority of the low band spectrum so they have better coverage. betty: off the top of your mind, what is the number one condition you want to see for you to say "ok, this merger is ok?" charlie: i think the main condition is obviously at&t controls a lot of the broadband pipes. what people do now is they bundle the video and broadband pipe together where you really cannot pick the best video choice for yourself if you want the broadband. in some cases, they are the only provider. our only meaningful broadband provider. what we want to make sure is

that broadband is sold as a standalone item and at a fair price to consumers. i think the other part is that you want to interconnect to the broadband pipe. the ramp to broadband -- you don't want that to be closed. net neutrality addresses some of that, but you and like to make sure the conditions of this merger are going to survive court cases. betty: going back to your wireless assets some people , estimate the value of your wireless assets to be $60 billion or so. what will you do with those wireless assets? there are reports that for you to leverage them up you're going to have to partner with a wireless company but if you don't, might you spin off those assets? might you separate dish into video and wireless spectrum? charlie: i think we have talked about this on one of our conference calls. we have looked at different structures. we continue to look at different

corporate structures so that you may end up with assets in different formations and the reason you would do that is to have flexibility for how they could get put to use and the timing of when they could be put to use. we have looked at that. we have not made any decisions on that yet. but it is something worthy of looking at. betty: is there anyone out there you would never partner with? charlie: i don't think we would ever say never. i don't think so. the people that i know in this industry i have a tremendous , amount of respect for what they have done. they have all been successful companies. they all have their strengths and weaknesses. they'll have things that are very meaningful. i think the most important thing for us is ultimately what will the value be to our shareholders and who will make the best use of our spectrum? so we can change the way people live by this connectivity and how that does change lives. we have done some of that on a small scale with satellite tv. we were the first guys to do

local to local on satellites. we were the first to have a dvr for the american public. we obviously have fought many battles to make sure that consumers have rights when it comes to watching tv, we have done a lot of good things. like i said i hope our best days , are ahead of us. if you change -- if you get people connected all the time, it changes every facet of your life from health care to education and to the way that you live, and it is a great digital divide conqueror because all levels of the american economy they all know how to use , phones and tablets. even little kids know how to use tablets at two years old or three years old. betty: it is a great equalizer. charlie: it is a great equalizer. i think we can have a positive impact on america and society in terms of making sure we bridge that digital divide and one of the ways we can do that is with connectivity. betty: when we come back, what is it like to work for ergen? i asked the dish founder about

his reputation as a difficult boss and how he can revamp that image and has company. more when "titans at the table" returns. ♪

♪ betty: welcome back to "titans at the table." i am betty liu. it was fun to sit down with charlie ergen, but according to some reports, it is not so fun to work for him.

an 2012 and 2013, employee surveys conducted by glass door gave dish network got some of the lowest ratings in the country for its work environment. ergen told me he is trying to change some things internally but also defended the culture he has built at dish. charlie: i think i am a really easy guy to work for and with if you are a high achiever and you want to achieve something. if you're just wanting a job, you are probably not going to like it too much here. i think dish is a culture for those people who want to achieve something. and there is some uncertainty, as you know, with what you can do with the wireless. our shareholders don't know exactly, so it takes a little bit of bravery as a shareholder. i think even for employees, they would like to know what will happen tomorrow but we don't always know what is going to happen tomorrow. it is a special kind of -- it takes trust in your management, a bit of an adventurous spirit

to work here. you are not in a training program, so you have to be more of a self-starter. for those people who like that, we have people who started in the warehouse that are executives. there is people who started in call centers who are executives now. people who are achieving their own internal potential and they are passionate about what they are doing. they're having a lot of fun. betty: if you were to write a management book, what would the title be? charlie: i couldn't write a book, number one, but i do think that the culture of a company is important and i think that companies that don't have a good track record of surviving a founder. the ones that do have a culture that carries on. not to say a culture would not evolve but it is what carries on, not the people. once you establish a culture, you have to hire and train into that culture. we have made some mistakes in

past where maybe we got complacent and did not do a good enough job upfront to make sure people understood what our culture was about. but i think what generally people like is they can make a difference, they can make decisions and do things quickly. whereas a lot of companies, it is a lot of data, analyzing. we have high expectations. and if you are not somebody who is used to high expectations, you are just not as comfortable here. i remember when my kids would be in the relay and in the track meet at school and the person who came in first and the person who came in last all got medals for participating. but we don't do that here. you don't get a medal for participation. betty: ergen went on to tell me that he thinks companies can be demanding while keeping their employees happy but it is clear that for this ceo, winning is what ultimately counts. so our conversation turns to competition.

as the paid tv market morphs, will there be a shakeout and who will succeed? charlie: i think there will be new technology and new businesses, i think there will be some some carcasses that don't make it along the side of the road. i just hope we're not one of them. you know, we don't mind other people being successful. we try to do it ourselves and think how we are going to be successful and we will be. betty: is it primarily on price? charlie: i think also user interface and how the ease of use. if you can pick it up and use it without an instruction manual. certainly, apple has pioneered that kind of thing but we have done a good job of that ourselves. we have a lot of room for improvement on sling tv. it has a pretty good user interface for 20 channels and now we have 60 channels.

and over 200 international channels. we have to make improvements there but it will befall it on distribution, it will befall on real estate. a lot of issues but price will be one of the issues. betty: given that, is apple tv -- the fact they have not revamped in several years -- are they little too late to the game? charlie: no, i think we are still in the first inning. i do not think they are late to the game at all. i think there is room for multiple entrants. we will probably see multiple entrants including the cable industry at some point in time. betty: where do you see video in five years? charlie: in general, almost every video that you and i would want to watch is probably in the cloud. we have access to that video and the next generation probably doesn't know video by channels, they probably don't know it by comedy central, they know it by this particular show, by the program. there is a loss of identity i think probably that goes on

between the networks and it just becomes shows. netflix has proven that, right? you get program info from viacom or discovery but you don't know it is their programming. i was always a little baffled why the programmers did that. but that cow is out of the barn. you are just going to talk to your phone or device and say this is what i want to watch and it will pull it up. and you are going to start watching it. you're not going to have to worry about pushing a button or recording something, or doing anything. you have access on demand. whether it is a 1930's movie or whether it be the latest sporting event. betty: you distribute content but would you ever go into creating content? charlie: i doubt it. we barely have expertise to do what we are doing today. as a company, and we are trying to get better, but we have no creation.on content

the only thing we ever created was a charlie chat. i would sit and talk to our customers like this when i was ceo and it was a pretty bad show. that is the best we have ever done. betty: have you reinstituted that? charlie: i haven't. the phone is not ringing off the hook to bring back the show. betty: that wraps up this special "titans at the table" conversation with dish tv founder and ceo, charlie ergen. you can find more episodes of our show on bloomberg.com, along with in-depth coverage of today's news and conversation with the world's business leaders. i am betty liu. thank you for watching "titans at the table." ♪ sçkw?c?coó

erik: bill gross is out to prove he's still got it, that he still has got the touch that made him one of the greatest investors of all time. in an exclusive interview, the one-time bond king tells me how he defines success, how he invests his own money, and how he is giving away his multibillion dollar fortune on this special edition of bloomberg's "encore." bill: i did not care for the aspersions that somehow i might have lost my touch. it is really hard to sink in as far as how much it is and what effect it could have. "would you like to manage a half a billion dollars for me?" and i said, "yes, sir." erik: welcome to "encore." i'm erik schatzker. bill gross earned his reputati