A Wall Street Journal analysis released today shows that executive compensation at top companies was down almost 1% in 2009. That’s after a 3.4% drop for CEO pay in 2008 as the recession took its toll and political outcry made big bonuses unpopular.

It’s natural to see companies cutting back in leaner times — even a bit refreshing to see that those on the top of the heap are sharing the pain of the little guys who have had salary freezes or furlough days. But what does it say about a company when it slashes CEO pay by over 90% — even as share prices have doubled in the last year?

That’s exactly what happened at Dish Network (DISH), where founder and CEO Charles Ergen suffered the harshest drop in pay across the entire WSJ survey — a drop of 92.5% to $623,100 a year in total compensation.

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While that figure is still 20 times the average salary of an adult American, it’s at the extreme bottom of the pay scale for the high-stress job of running a publicly traded company with a $9 billion market size and almost $13 billion in annual revenue. And it’s not like Ergen has been asleep at the wheel — DISH stock is up about 125% since the March 9, 2009, lows and in its latest quarter topped Wall Street earnings per share estimates by 25%.

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So why would DISH pay its CEO so little? Well, perhaps it’s because as the founder of Dish Network that Ergen has more of an interest in the success of the company than padding his own bank account. Cable providers like Comcast (CMCSA) and Time Warner (TWX) are virtual monopolies, and satellite rival DirecTV (DTV) boasts 30% more customers – 18 million by the latest estimate to 14 million at DISH. Putting the company’s money to work toppling these rivals may be more important to Ergen than anything else.

Another idea would be that the CEO is simply playing a public relations game akin to Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit took a salary of $1 without any bonuses after a massive government bailout, or when General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner made a similar $1 pay pledge. While 600 large isn’t peanuts, it’s certainly not the $52 million pulled in by Occidental Petroleum (OXY) CEO Ray R. Irani.

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The final theory — and one that’s more disturbing for DISH shareholders — is that the company either doesn’t have the cash or doesn’t have the inclination to pay its leadership top dollar. That could signal trouble down the road if its true, because Dish Network is going to need to woo the best and brightest executives to fend off cable rivals and satellite leader DTV. Settling for second-tier talent is no way to become the best in the business.

Pay is all relative. Obviously a cashier should make less than a CEO because of the difference in experience, education and skills for the job. And in the world of CEO pay where top execs routinely pull in seven and eight figures, $623,100 seems like chump change.

Texas, Fla., Mich. Launches Push Satellite Provider’s HD Presence To 39 Local Markets

By Linda Moss — Multichannel News, 3/27/2008 11:10:00 AM

Dish Network will begin offering local stations in high-definition in four new markets: Austin, Texas; Flint, Mich.; and Orlando and West Palm Beach, Fla., officials said Thursday.

With these additions, Dish Network now offers HDTV locals in 39 markets, reaching more than 54% of U.S. TV households with local HD channels.

“We announced earlier this year that we would reach our goal of 100 local HD markets and 100 national HD channels by the end of 2008, and over the next two months we will continue toward this goal by increasing our local HD offerings by more than 60 percent,” Eric Sahl, Dish’s senior vice president of programming, said in a statement. “We understand that our customers watch some of their favorite TV programming through their local networks and by adding these markets we are again demonstrating our continued commitment to enhance how our customers watch TV.”

The US DTH provider DISH Network has said it will deliver 100 local HD markets and 100 national HD channels by the end of 2008. This month, the operator will start delivering local HD channels in four new markets, and adding the New England Sports Network (NESN) in HD.

In a statement, Eric Sahl, senior VP of programming, said: “And over the next two months we will continue toward this goal by increasing our local HD offerings by more than 60%.

The four new markets are: Austin, Texas; Flint, Mich.; Orlando, Fla.; and West Palm Beach, Fla.With the additions, DISH Network offers HD locals in 39 markets, reaching more than 54% of US television households with local HD channels, the company said.

VentureBeat is reporting that Google is taking the first rumored moves in its obvious next step to bring Google Video Ads to the masses by signing a major advertising deal with Dish Network, the second largest satellite TV company in the US.

The latest reports are significant because they suggest Google may be on its way to cracking the huge television market, to deliver a very different kind of ad to peoples’ living rooms.

Dish is the nation’s leader in high definition and interactive TV programming. Google’s TV ads, like the ones Google distributes already to Internet sites, would be delivered more efficiently — targeted more closely to the content of the TV programming being watched, and more relevant to the people actually watching it — or at least, that is Google’s intent.

Beyond the ability to target commercials to the programs and content viewers are currently watching, Google & Dish Network could also target ads to:

* Viewing behavior : If they watch Oxygen and Lifetime, chances are viewer is a woman, age 28-45. If the viewer watches MTV2 and Spike, male 16-29. History Channel, male 40-60 .. etc. Even if they are watching shows which are not targeted to their demographic or behavior.
* Ads ‘Clicked’ : If a user responded to the phone number, text, click (if Internet style browser capability and ecommerce enablement is added to Dish Network interfce) or specific URL for Video Ad A, chances are they would also be a candidate for Video Ad B.
* Google Account Integration : If Dish Network users can sign into Google Accounts via TV, then Google could target Video Ads based upon online, search and television behavior.

After defying broad forecasts of their imminent demise in the face of cable operators’ package of services, the companies continued to post solid subscriber growth throughout 2006. The trick was still-superior video service that helped poach subscribers, boosted by a boom in homeownership in near-captive markets in rural areas neglected by the big cable companies.

But, after bidding the stocks higher earlier in the year, investors are again abandoning positions in the two satellite competitors. This time, cable is still seen as a threat, but a new challenger has arisen – phone giant Verizon Communications Inc.

Verizon’s new fiber-optic broadband service, or FiOS, added 203,000 subscribers in the latest quarter for a total of 1.1 million. Of those, 515,000 were also signed up to get TV through the fiber, a tenfold increase from a year ago.

“With Verizon now beginning to take a non-negligible number of subscribers onto it FiOS platform for the first time, (satellite) subscriber growth faces significant headwinds,” said Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett.

The new threat is not likely to be enough by itself to consign DirecTV and EchoStar to permanent status as niche players. But combined with the continuous onslaught from cable, the duopoly is in for tough times.

Satellite television operators have always been credited with having the best video quality and largest selection of programming. Cable companies, led by Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Corp., spent billions in the 1990s to upgrade their systems to deliver broadband connections that would allow for digital cable, and improved video. But it also marked a shift in cable’s favor, as it enabled the companies to offer both television and high-speed Internet service.

It also pitted the cable giants against phone companies like Verizon and AT&T, who had upgraded their wires to copper and could offer another version of high-speed Internet access, digital subscriber line, or DSL.

Meanwhile, DirecTV and EchoStar, which runs the DISH network, kept adding subscribers as rural communities grew. They even poached customers from cable by offering lower prices and unique programming, such as DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket package of professional football games.

Last year, though, cable stormed ahead by offering a third service – Internet-based telephone. With the so-called “triple play,” the cable giants had the advantage of offering one bill for these three main household services.

The argument was that cable’s bundled services – offered for introductory rates of about $99 – would lure customers away from phone and satellite providers who could offer only one or two of the services. Cable numbers grew in 2006, but satellite didn’t lose too much ground. It still offered a superior quality of video and developed a growing loyalty among its users, although growth did slow.

A look at DirecTV’s numbers shows this is not the first time it has had a sharp and extended slowdown in growth. New subscribers rose steadily from 1998 to a peak of 527,000 in the fourth quarter of 2000, before skidding all the way to 181,000 in the second quarter of 2003. The figure rebounded sharply to 505,000 in the first quarter of 2005. It went as low as 125,000 last year.

The company reported Wednesday that it added 158,000 net subscribers in the second quarter, in line with analyst expectations.

But cable also had troubles in the quarter. The biggest players reported not just slower growth, but an actual reduction in basic cable subscribers. A primary reason, analysts said, was Verizon.

For the first time, Verizon signed up more subscribers to get broadband Internet service through FiOS than through the copper lines for DSL, or digital subscriber line.

The rise of Verizon poses a threat especially to the EchoStar and DirecTV because phone companies had long been thought of as logical partners for the two. With satellite’s superior video and phone’s ability to offer voice and Internet service, the combination would match up with cable’s triple play, analysts say.

EchoStar, in particular, has made some local agreements with small regional phone companies to offer broadband service. Its stock was boosted by rumors that AT&T, itself in search of a video product, might try to acquire the company. Those rumors have been dead for several months now, though.

One of the reasons is that there remain knocks on satellite’s video service. Cable has been able to boost average revenue per subscriber by offering video on demand and more high-definition stations. Because of technical limitations, satellite can only send – not receive – signals, forcing a workaround that limits its VOD service; and copyright problems are threatening to hamstring EchoStar’s offering of local HD stations.

The problems have been reflected in the two companies’ share prices. After a run-up last year, DirecTV has underperformed the market so far through July. EchoStar is ahead of the S&P 500, considered the most relevant gauge of the broader market, but recently has fallen back toward par with that index.

Moffett, the analyst, said the two companies remain solid in terms of cash generation, but there is reason to expect a continued slowdown in growth, making them less attractive investments.

The deal underscores Google’s ambition to become a premier broker of advertising for not just the Internet, but TV, radio, print publications and other media.

Google said it would sell a portion of EchoStar’s TV ads through an automated online auction system that’s similar to the one it has used to dominate Web-search ads.

“We think that TV is becoming more like the Web,” said Keval Desai, Google’s director of product management for TV advertising. “If you think about TV, you have hundreds of networks. That’s a lot of content. The audience is getting increasingly fragmented. If you’re an advertiser, it’s very hard for you to go and target these networks one by one. You need a scalable, automated platform.”

The companies did not reveal the financial terms or duration of their contract. EchoStar, based in Englewood, Colo., has 13.1 million subscribers to its Dish Network service.

“For us, it’s an investment in the future of advertising,” said Michael Kelly, EchoStar executive vice president of advertising. “It’s a multiyear contract, but we think it should last forever.”

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has made inroads with radio and print advertising, striking deals in recent months with radio broadcasters and major newspaper publishers.

The deal with EchoStar represents Google’s first jump into TV, whose roughly $70-billion-a-year ad market dwarfs the estimated $17 billion a year spent on Internet ads. At this point, though, it’s a dive into the shallow end of the pool, because it involves only a small percentage of EchoStar’s airtime.

The field is already crowded with start-ups such as Los Angeles-based SpotRunner and a tangled network of ad-buying agencies, some run by multibillion-dollar conglomerates. It’s unclear how willing they will be to work with Google, whose advances onto new turf are raising eyebrows across the media industry.

Google is betting that the innovations that helped make it the juggernaut online will win customers offline.

Desai said Google offered a single marketplace for TV ad buyers who have traditionally had to cut deals with individual shows on individual networks.

Through Google’s automated online system, marketers can upload their ads, specify how much they’re willing to spend in total and bid for TV spots. They can also target an audience by selecting shows that match the demographic group they want to reach and can choose the time of day or region in which the ads run.

Within 24 hours, the advertisers receive feedback on how many times their ads have run and whether viewers switched channels during them. The information will come from data EchoStar collects from subscriber set-top boxes.

“None of what Google is doing is totally novel,” said Greg Sterling, an online advertising analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence. “What’s new here is Google’s ability to bring all these things together — the auction, the efficiency and the accountability.”

Advertisers will welcome the ability to gauge exactly how many times their ads have been seen, said Bill Harvey, president of New York-based Touchpoints ROI Analytics Inc., a firm that measures advertising effectiveness.

“The way you measure it in the past is by extrapolating Nielsen’s surveys of 10,000 homes,” Harvey said. “Now you can get actual data from the set-top boxes. That’s huge.”

EchoStar is hoping that Google will bring new advertisers.

“We think that this will open up TV advertising to a much wider and broader array of advertisers who will use the medium surgically,” Kelly said.

There was some good news for the terrestrial broadcasting industry as well, however, in the finding that satellite listeners tend to be much more frequent users of radio in general. On average, they listen to 33 hours per week of programming, including 14 hours of AM/FM content, 10 hours and 45 minutes of satellite radio, and 8 hours and 15 minutes of internet audio.

Under the agreement Virgin America passengers will be able to view an array of EchoStar’s DISH Network satellite TV programming. In addition to live DISH Network satellite TV, the airline will offer customers ‘pay-per-view’ movies, a wide array of audio music entertainment including the ability to compile individual audio playlists, a broad selection of popular electronic games, and even meals on-demand.

The U.S.-owned and operated airline is based at San Francisco International Airport and intends to launch scheduled domestic airline service in spring 2007 upon government approval.

“Once the Department of Transportation says we can fly, we’ll be ready to offer our guests an incredible entertainment experience and DISH Network is a major component of that,” said Charles Ogilvie, Virgin America’s director of Inflight Entertainment and Partnerships. “Our interactive entertainment system is more than just a channel lineup in which our guests will immerse themselves. We believe they’ll find it to be an exciting, customer-friendly experience overall.”

Virgin America has placed firm orders for 34 Airbus A320 aircraft and said it anticipates announcing additional IFE team members, content relationships and strategic partners in the near future.