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Dish Network24/7 Wall Street is out with its latest most-hated company list, and Dish Network is one rung down from the top of the ladder. The cable industry, which often has companies listed on lists such as this, gets a breather, but Facebook has a home on it.


Dish came in #2 thanks to negative ratings from its customers, and also from its employees. The report cited historically bad customer service exacerbated when it decided to simply drop popular programming during its compensation negotiarion with AMC Networks, costing its subscribers access to shows like “Mad Men.”

Dish’s relationship with its own staff was heralded in a BusinessWeek article which called the firm “The Meanest Company in America.” According to BusinessWeek, the company maintains a “culture of condescension and distrust.”

Although it is not part of the 24/7 Wall Street article, Dish has also been a thorn in the side of broadcasters, particularly regarding retransmission consent – along with DirecTV and Time Warner Cable, it is one of the three MVPDs most likely to trigger a program outage due to stalled negotiations.

Facebook came in at #4 – reasons included its much-heralded IPO which resulted in a stock-market faceplant was the stock quickly lost value from its opening price. Other reasons include continuing privacy issues and its claim to republishing rights for any photos placed on its Instagram service.

Three telecom-related companies made the list, including #3 T-Mobile, #6 Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, and handset manufacturer #7 Nokia.

#1 went to J.C. Penney, described as a company which managed to transition from mediocre to trainwreck. Others on the list included #5 Citigroup, #7 American Airlines, #9 Sears, and #10 Hewlett-Packard.

RBR-TVBR observation: For years and years, cable companies have been prone to inclusion on lists like this, if for no other reason than that almost everybody has a story about an unsatisfactory service call. Add to that their willingness to charge for each and every little thing subscribers get, balanced against the lack of credit back to the subscriber when there is a service outage.

It is perhaps a sign of the times that their position has been taken by members of the telecommunications community, which have a similar relationship with subscribers.

We rarely see broadcast companies on lists such as this.

And RBR-TVBR has never ever been on such a list. We thank our readers for keeping our nominations somewhere between few and none!