♪ betty: he is the country boy millionaire of dish network, billionaire charlie ergen. he weighs in on television, his plans, and 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. dish network ceo charlie ergen has been known as something of a renegade, from being thrown out of casinos for counting cards and selling dishes from his car. in the process of starting his company, he has become one of the richest man in america, worth more than $20 billion. he stepped out of the spotlight in 2011. hadning the reigns to joe clayton. just four years later, the founder is back in the hot seat. like the satellite tv business, ergen wants to be at the forefront of television change with an over the top product, sling tv.

he wants to buy assets of what he says can be used to build a legitimate competitor against at&t. when we sat down at "titans," i asked him to describe his plan. charlie: tv is changing. people are looking more for what they want to watch and not paying for what they don't want to watch. tv is everywhere. part of that is the technology is ott, over the top that allows customers to do that. the second transformation 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 connectivity revolution. the best place to do this in the marketplace is in wireless technology. betty: this is why 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 in the future. that is what we are looking forward to the future. betty: charlie, does this remind you at all about 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. the incumbent said why would anybody pay? 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 there are similarities. ott eliminated some of the paying points. ott is 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 pain points with ott. you don't have to sign a contract, you don't have equipment to buy it normally. you can go on vacation and not pay for of subscription or to put it on hold for a month.

it is immediate. so you can sign up for sling tv and watch the nba finals tonight and you don't have to wait for an installer. betty: you don't have to wait out of work and wait for the cable guy. charlie: we have several mini 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 wanting to pay for more television today. or who at one time paid for tv and thought it was to expensive. we have a long way to go. we are not perfect yet. live tv is really hard, because we are doing things and inventing things like dynamic ad insertion that we haven't used before. it reminds me a lot of of what we have been selling. we had all kinds of technical problem and we just knocked them down one by one by one. we occasionally have a technical problem today. betty: but obviously you resolved them then. charlie: we have resolved most of them, but we had a choice to make, it was either get out there and find out what we don't know or wait and try to be

perfect. but i think it will pay off for us now and for the people who are watching who did not have a good experience, 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 wireless options, so when are you going to make your play? charlie: a, i think, we have told people what we are going to do, and that is virtually the same thing for the last five years. 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 but in 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 don't know 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 up the phone 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 going to react to that. and so 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 we have 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 be a 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 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 $60 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 mean, 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. the uncarrier, so to speak. 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 very similar to our spectrum position. it fits in that sense and of course, obviously, their growth rate, they will need more spectrum. those things make sense. 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. i think there is a number of options that are out there. certainly, t-mo is an option. betty: speaking of the german owner, there are reports that 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 there. where do you think dish should really be trading it? charlie: i never can predict the stock market.

i would say that in the long run, our shares are undervalued, and i think with 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 some 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. i think our best days are ahead of us. i think it is how you can manage the company, and 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 said that there needs to be meaningful conditions, particularly protecting

consumers for broadband rights. the incentive option is coming up and there is a set aside for new competitors. potentially. set at 30 megahertz. us and other companies will want that to be higher. it is what stands in the way of real competition, the fact they control the vast majority of the 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 for us?" 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 together where you really cannot pick the best video choice for yourself if you want the broadband. in some cases, they are the only broadband provider in the territory. or the only meaningful broadband provider in some areas. what we want to make sure is

that broadband is sold as a standalone item and at a fair price to consumers. the other part is that they interconnect to the broadband pipe. the ramp to broadband -- you don't want that to be closed. and net neutrality addresses some of that, but you'd like to make sure the conditions of this merger or to make sure that it is going to survive court cases. betty: some people estimate the value of your wireless assets to be $60 billion or so. what will you do with those wireless assets? because 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: 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 just to have flexibility for how they could get put to use and the timing for how they would be put to use. we have looked at that. we have not made any decisions on that yet. 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. never say never. the people i know in this industry -- i have a tremendous amount of respect for what they have done. they all have their strengths and weaknesses. they have been very successful companies. they all 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 that we can change the way people live by this connectivity and how that does change lives. and we have done some of that on

a small scale with satellite tv. we were the first guys to really do local to local. we were the first to have a dvr for the american public. we obviously have fought many battles to make sure that consumers have the right to choose when it comes to watching tv, we have done a lot of good things. 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 to the way that you live, and it is a great digital divide conqueror because at all levels of the american economy, rich, poor, urban, rural, they all know how to use phones and tablets. even the children. 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 is trying to revamp that image.

charlie: you don't get a medal for participation. betty: 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 much fun to work for him. in 2012 and 2013, employee surveys gave dish network 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. all right? i think dish is a culture for those people who want to achieve something. and there is some uncertainty, as you know, as we are talking about 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 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 do not know where you will go. 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. people who started in call centers who are executives now. we have people who are achieving their own internal potential and they are passionate about what they are doing. and 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 don't have a good track record of surviving a founder. the ones that do have a culture that carries on. all right? not to say a culture would not evolve and change after time but it is what carries on, not the people. once you establish a culture, you have to hire and train into that. we have made some mistakes in the past where maybe we got complacent and did not do a good enough job upfront to make sure

people understood what our culture was all 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. a lot of meetings without decisions. the negative is we have high expectations. here, we are moving pretty quickly. so the negative part of that is that we have high expectations, so if you are not used to that, you are not as comfortable. 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 for this ceo, winning is what ultimately counts. so our conversation turned 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, there will be some some carcasses that don't make it just 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 really try to do it ourselves and think how we are going to be successful and we will be if we have good product and good choice. betty: is it primarily on price? charlie: i think also user interface and ease of use. if you can pick it up and use it without an instruction manual. certainly, apple has pioneered that but we have done a good job of that ourselves. we have a lot of room for improvement on sling tv. it was a pretty good user interface for 20 channels and now we have 60 channels.

we have to make improvements there but it will be fought on a number of issues. it will be fought on distribution, real estate. is your app on devices. 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 a little too late to the game? charlie: no, i think we are still in the first inning. i think there is room for multiple entrants. we will probably see multiple entrants including the cable industry at future points in time. betty: where do you see video in five years? charlie: in general, almost every video is in the cloud. we are connected to the cloud and 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 probably that goes on between the networks and the shows. 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. and i am a little bit -- 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 to your 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 expertise on content creation. 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. and, you know, that is the best we have ever done. betty: have you reinstituted that? charlie: i haven't yet. there isn'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 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." ♪

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