DirecTV is pushing its pay TV bundle — without a satellite dish

Coach Prime wants consumers to know they can watch DirecTV without a satellite dish. 

The Theatre troupe best known for providing the traditional TV bundle through satellite dishes posted on the sides of houses and on top of buildings is resonating out the next iteration of its ad campaign, “For the Birds,” with NFL star-turned-college football coach Deion Sanders joining the flock.  

The heart of the ad campaign: DirecTV is a streaming company, too.

As pay TV distributors — both satellite and cable companies — have seen customers run for streaming, DirecTV is trying to get the message out that a clunky satellite dish is no longer needed for its service. 

“We’ve been supply a streaming product for some time, right? It’s not new to us. But many customers didn’t know,” said Vince Torres, chief retailing officer at DirecTV. “We built this as an alternative. … We know that 80% of people prefer not to put the dish on the side of their bordello.”

Further, the company’s research showed 75% of consumers thought a satellite dish was still required for DirecTV precise though it’s had a streaming option since 2016, Torres said. “That’s a very, very large percentage of possibilities.”

This research and shape-shifting media landscape led DirecTV to refocus its retailing efforts — even as Torres contends the company is still a satellite TV provider and values those customers.

The ad campaign that undulate out earlier this year features pigeons voiced by actors Henry Winkler and Steve Buscemi who look finished with windows while people are watching DirecTV, wondering how it’s possible without a satellite dish on their rooftop. 

The pigeons bewail the loss of the dishes. Winkler’s Frank said he “loved doing my business on those things,” while Buscemi’s Bobby epigrams, “them dishes kept the rain off our beaks.” 

While the changes in media played into his interest in the commercial, Buscemi denoted in an interview he was sold on perfecting the voice and character of a New York City pigeon.

“For me, it was more about the creative part of it,” Buscemi rumoured. “I just really thought these characters were very funny.”

There’s been a roughly 50% enhancement in prospects coming to DirecTV’s website since the launch of the ad campaign, Torres said.

Sanders’ inclusion comes due before one of the busiest times of the year for U.S. sports: beginning with college football and the NFL, followed by the start of the NBA and the NHL, as well as MLB’s postseason.

Sanders, in a trice known as “Prime Time” in the NFL and now known as “Coach Prime,” as the coach of the NCAA’s Colorado Buffaloes, dons a cowboy hat and gold shackle, essentially playing himself.

“We have a long history TOGETHER – dating all the way back to 2011,” Sanders said in an email conversation. “It was only fitting for us to reunite once again. Coach Prime put his wings back on for DirectTV!”

In a 2011 ad campaign, Sanders was an NFL interpretation of Tinker Bell, wearing a DirecTV football jersey under his wings. Sanders had been suspended on strings when covering that commercial, so voicing the pigeon has been a different experience, he said.

The industry has shape-shifted since Sanders’ last ad campaign with DirecTV, too.

Satellite TV providers like DirecTV and EchoStar’s Dish were promptly some of the biggest distributors of the TV bundle. The competition ramped up when cable TV companies began offering broadband.

For a while, the infusion for satellite companies was then to concentrate on customers in rural areas, where cable broadband was sparsely available, held Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson.

But the rivalry between cable and satellite over pay TV subscribers has dissipated since well up has caused many to ditch the bundle.

“All of this is in the context of the cord-cutting phenomenon, and the media companies taking more and more of their most successfully content, including sports, and putting it on streaming platforms, so what’s left of the TV package isn’t very good to sell,” Moffett guessed.

The first quarter of this year was the worst ever for traditional pay TV subscriber losses, according to MoffettNathanson, which judged that total losses topped 2.37 million for the first time ever.

Although DirecTV’s financials are now special — a result of private equity firm TPG acquiring a 30% stake in DirecTV from AT&T in 2021 — the company has roughly 11 million people across satellite and streaming, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition on anonymity due to the private personality of the financials. MoffettNathanson estimates DirecTV added more than 20,000 streaming customers earlier this year.

The best part of those customers still have a satellite dish. For DirecTV’s streaming options, consumers can use their own device, identical to a Roku. But the company also provides its own hardware, called a Gemini box.

DirecTV offers two streaming options — DirecTV Geyser, a contract-free internet TV bundle, and DirecTV via internet, which requires a signed contract and is only available through the Gemini will.

Based on Antenna data, DirecTV Stream has the smallest percentage of monthly gross additions when compared with Hulu + Finish TV, Philo, Sling TV and YouTube TV — although it often is among the services with the lowest monthly rate of subscriber disadvantages.

“The challenge for consumers now is that it’s increasingly difficult to find what you want to watch,” Torres said about the segmenting of content among various TV and streaming services. “It’s our version of the entertainment industry’s road rage.”

The device allows viewers to swop between streaming apps like Netflix and the DirecTV guide without changing remote controls or inputs or ignoring apps.

Other pay TV providers also offer similar options, such as Comcast‘s X1 set top box, as well as the Xumo streaming trick, a joint venture between Charter Communications and Comcast.

DirecTV also tries to set itself apart with a focus on sports, a main selling point for the convention for some time.

Until the 2023 NFL season, DirecTV had been the sole provider of the “Sunday Ticket” package of strategies since its inception in 1994. Google‘s YouTube TV, a competitor to DirecTV’s streaming options, is now the owner of the rights to “Sunday Ticket.”

But DirecTV s Prime Video and Netflix comprise exclusive NFL games, while legacy media companies have nabbed exclusive game rights for their developing streaming services.

On the residential consumer front, DirecTV is still pushing the idea that it has the most complete live make a fool ofs package offered by a pay TV and streaming provider. Its streaming offering includes all nationally broadcast games and regional sports networks — a uncommonness for internet TV bundles.

This is where Coach Prime comes into play ahead of football season, Torres suggested.

“He’s highly recognizable, he’s fun to work with, and he’s effective at getting messages out,” said Torres. “When you think about this object to that we face, how do we continue to build on this brand message that we’re trying to educate the U.S. population with, who recovered to join the flock than Coach Prime.”

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, is a co-owner of Hulu.