The strategy appears to be directed at both Congress and the U.S. population in general, and is reminiscent of similar campaigns that derailed the proposed 2005 acquisition of Unocal by China’s Cnooc Ltd. (NYSE: CEO) and the attempt in 2006 by Dubai Ports World to acquire the management of six major U.S. ports. Both acquisitions were scuttled when issues of national interest and security were raised.

Dish Network appears to be launching a counterattack to a reported threat by Softbank to withhold a piece of the underwriting of the planned IPO of China’s Alibaba e-commerce website from any bank that offers to help fund Dish Network’s offer for Sprint. Softbank owns a one-third interest in Alibaba.

The new Dish Network website also conjures a threat from the use of Chinese-made network equipment to U.S. national security. In February 2011, the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) forced China’s Huawei Technologies to unwind its $2 million acquisition of bankrupt U.S. networking startup 3Leaf Systems.

It is hard to fault Dish Network for running out a strategic attack that has proved successful on at least three other occasions. The company’s arguments against an acquisition of Sprint by Softbank fit easily into the mold carved out by others. The one significant difference is that Softbank is based in Japan, one of the U.S.’s staunchest allies. It will be a lot harder to persuade Congress — and CFIUS — that Softbank poses a serious threat to U.S. national security.

Sirius XM ended 2012 with 23.9 million users and ended the first quarter with 24.4 million users. Today’s projection is to end the year with roughly 25.3 million subscribers.

If you want to know just how much difference the company sees between it and Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) and terrestrial radio, the numbers are rather stark. Sirius XM showed $142.34 in revenue per subscriber in 2012. That compares to only $6.51 per active Pandora user and $12.91 per Clear Channel listener.

A driving force, no pun intended, is new car sales. Sirius XM says that of the 14.5 million new cars sold in 2012 the company had 67% penetration in them. The forecast used to derive the higher subscriber numbers appears to be based on expected car sales growth. The company used projections of 15.3 million new cars sold in 2013 and 15.9 million in 2014. From 2015 to 2017 it used 16.3 million cars on a static basis per year. Sirius even sees more than 100 million Sirius XM-enabled vehicles in operation in 2017 to 2018.

Financial guidance for 2013 calls for revenue of more than $3.7 billion, although we would point out that Thomson Reuters already has a consensus estimate of $3.79 billion and the street-high estimate is $3.86 billion. The company sees 2013 EBITDA above $1.1 billion and free cash flows of about $915 million. The self-pay net subscriber additions are put at about 1.6 million, and total net subscriber additions are targeted to be about 1.4 million.

Out of the company’s $2 billion stock buyback plan, Sirius XM said that it has repurchased a total of 209 million shares as of April 26. Its special dividend of $0.05 at the end of 2012 also came to a $327 million total payout to its shareholders.

Sirius XM shares are up two cents at $3.52, against a 52-week trading range of $1.80 to $3.59. Its market capitalization is currently listed as $22.4 billion.

FULL SIRIUS XM SLIDE SHOW

Today Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH) offered $2 billion to purchase spectrum from LightSquared even though the spectrum has not yet been approved for use. The offer was reported by Bloomberg, which cited “people familiar with the matter.” The bid from Dish is a stalking-horse bid, which is routinely used in bankruptcy proceedings as a minimum price for an an asset.

LightSquared is controlled by Harbinger Capital Partners and its CEO, Phil Falcone, and has sunk more than $3 billion into developing the company’s 4G network. After testing in late 2011 and early 2012, traffic on LightSquared’s network was found to interfere with GPS systems. The company continues to try to find a work-around, but no progress has been announced.

Dish, which has countered Softbank’s bid for Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S), also has a bid in the works for Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR) in case it cannot prevail in its attempt to acquire Sprint. Dish seeks to add wireless spectrum in order to offer a package of services both for a customer’s home and mobile services. LightSquared’s spectrum holdings total nearly 60 MHz, a significant amount, but not in an easy-to-use location.

The Financial Times this morning is citing “two people familiar with the situation” who say that Softbank, which owns about one-third of China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba, has been telling investment bankers that if they want a piece of Alibaba’s coming initial public offering (IPO), the banks had better pass on helping fund an offer from Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH) for Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S). Softbank’s $20.1 billion offer for Sprint has been topped by an offer of $25.5 billion from Dish.

Alibaba’s IPO is the hottest thing on Wall Street since the IPO of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB). The IPO is expected to take place in the fourth quarter of this year or early next year at a valuation in the neighborhood of $60 billion to $80 billion. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) sold about half of its 40% stake in Alibaba back to the Chinese firm late last year for total consideration of about $7.6 billion. That placed a valuation of around $40 billion on Alibaba.

A consortium of nine banks, including Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS), Deutsche Bank A.G. (NYSE: DB), HSBC Holdings PLC (NYSE: HBC), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) recently refinanced $8 billion in Alibaba debt at lower interest, and the nine are believed to have the inside track on the coming IPO.

How credible is a threat from Softbank to withhold the IPO from banks that cooperate with Dish? Investment banks are almost desperate for profitable Asian business and Softbank’s message is pretty clear, even if the Japanese company has not said as much directly. But even though Softbank owns a big chunk of Alibaba, the Japanese probably cannot tell the Chinese which banks to use. The banks will get the message without having to be told.

The company attributed the decline in revenues to its Blockbuster segment, as if anyone expected that to be a winner. The big drop in profit was caused by higher programming and subscriber acquisition costs. Even excluding a $99 million one-time gain in the first quarter of last year, Dish came up about $30 million lower in operating income this year.

The company’s CEO said:

Broadband sales are encouraging, especially given that almost all of our dishNET™customers have bundled with our pay-TV service.

New pay-TV subscriber additions were lower, but net subscriber numbers rose by about 36,000 in the first quarter. Dish’s subscriber count of 14.09 million is about 20,000 more than at the end of the same period a year ago.

The company added 66,000 broadband customers in the first quarter, compared to just 6,000 a year ago. This is where the company is looking for growth and why it has made bids for both Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR) and Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S). Expect Dish to chase Clearwire with renewed gusto if it loses out on Sprint.

Dish shares are trading down about 1.4% in the premarket this morning to $39.04. The stock’s 52-week range is $26.12 to $40.95, and that high was posted yesterday. The consensus target price for the shares was around $40.75 before today’s report.

On a GAAP basis, the company posted first-quarter EPS of $1.20, compared with EPS of $1.07 in the same period a year ago. Adjusted earnings do not include a pretax charge of $166 million related to the devaluation of Venezuela’s currency.

DirecTV added 21,000 U.S. subscribers in the first quarter, and average revenue per customer rose 4.4% to $96.05. In the company’s Latin American division, the net subscriber count grew by 538,000, which was slightly lower than the growth in the same period a year ago. Average revenue per customer fell 10.5% to$54.23, primarily due to currency effects. The company said that stripping out currency effects average revenue per user rose 1.5%.

The company’s CEO said:

Our industry leading revenue growth of 8% continues to be driven by the strength of our premier brands and popularity of our differentiated product and service offerings across the Americas, as well as our ability to profitably grow [average revenue per user] in a challenging U.S. operating environment.

Perhaps the company’s best move in the quarter was something it did not do. DirecTV declined to pay the asking price of around $9 billion for the Brazilian unit of Vivendi. Shares jumped to a new 52-week high shortly after that decision was announced and have continued to rise since.

Shares are up 4.1% this morning at $60.37, which would mark a new 52-week high if it holds. The current 52-week range is $42.87 to $58.45. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $60.20 before today’s report.

Ergen said, “We’re not going to lose because we’ve got a better offer on the table.” Dish’s offer for Sprint is $7.10 in cash per share, along with a 32% ownership stake for Sprint shareholders in the combined company, tops Softbank’s cash offer of $6.38 a share and a 30% stake in Sprint.

Softbank has said that it will not improve its offer, but that was then. Ergen appears to expect a sweetened offer for Sprint from Softbank, and indicated yesterday that Dish would have to seek a private equity partner if Softbank put in a bid of $7.50 or $8.00 a share.

Ergen also made it very clear about what is important to Dish: the spectrum owned by Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR), a company controlled by Sprint and for which the wireless carrier already has offered to buy the rest of the company. Dish has tried before to acquire spectrum from Clearwire, only to be rebuffed. Now the gloves are off.

Ergen’s strategy — if he can acquire Sprint/Clearwire — is to leverage Dish’s satellite network with a terrestrial wireless network that would allow subscribers to get mobile wireless service as part of a single package. Verizon Wireless — still a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone Group PLC (NASDAQ: VOD) — and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) both seek the same thing, but neither has the content licenses that Dish already has in place with the media companies.

That is a huge part of Ergen’s play here. Dish would be transformed virtually overnight into the only U.S. provider of a single, all-inclusive wireless-pay TV package that would allow customers seamless access to media content both inside and outside their homes.

Suddenly, Dish is a threat to what is essentially a duopoly at the top of the wireless industry in the United States. The FCC would be hard-pressed to deny a merger that promises to increase competition for consumers.

It is still early days, but the fight for Sprint/Clearwire has all the earmarks of being a good one for Sprint shareholders. Shares are trading now at $7.12, slightly above Dish’s cash offer of $7.10. If Softbank makes a higher bid, shares will shoot up on the expectation that Dish will top the offer.

Ergen has as much as said that Dish Network’s future depends on its acquisition of Sprint/Clearwire. Certainly Dish’s growth prospects are dim without a transformative deal like this, and there are no other deals out there like this one. For Dish, it is grow or die.

Lead underwriters were listed as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch. The company sold just over 19.3 million shares, versus the 21.7 million shares previously projected. Its price went off at $18 per share, and that was under its expected range of $21 to $25 per share we originally tracked.

Obviously the increased volatility in the equity and risk-based markets have thrown a wrench into the IPO market. At least that is the case for a leveraged satellite player backed by private equity, where the net proceeds will only pay down a small portion of a very large debt burden. We could not help but notice that Intelsat had almost $16 billion worth of debt on its balance sheet. Also, that it was trading at about eight times EBITDA, and that after losing $151 million in 2012 and losing $434 million in 2011. Revenue was up less than 1% in 2012 to $2.61 billion.

Intelsat has a fleet of more than 50 satellites. It serves about 1,500 customers in telecom, government, media and data markets. Those satellites are tied into terrestrial infrastructures via teleports and fiber optic networks.

The company also sold a concurrent public offering of 3,000,000 Series A mandatory convertible junior non-voting preferred shares at a price of $50.00 per share. BC partners and Silver Lake Partners were the private equity firms behind Intelsat. The good news is that investors jumped on a weak opening price of $17.00. Now the stock is up almost 6% to $19.10, with more than 5 million shares trading hands.

In addition to the threat from Aereo, broadcasters and cable channels are raging at Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH) and its Hopper DVR that allows subscribers to record a program and then replay it without advertising.

That may be a lose-lose situation though, because there are still more than 11 million households in the U.S. that still receive broadcast signals. Going cable-only would force these households either to pay for a subscription to Fox or find some other channel to watch. The other broadcast networks, CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS), ABC, owned by The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), and NBC, owned by Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) face the same threat and may end up as cable-only channels as well.

News Corp.’s COO told Bloomberg:

We need to be able to be fairly compensated for our content. This is not an ideal path we look to pursue, but we can’t sit idly by and let an entity steal our signal. We will move to a subscription model if that’s our only recourse.

CBS has already threatened to pull its programming from Dish’s satellite system in response to the Hopper ad-skipping device. So far, Dish hasn’t blinked, but if CBS gets serious, Dish may have to back down or its 14 million subscribers will lose NFL football and other popular programming.

Aereo doesn’t face the same threat. The broadcasters will surely appeal the court decisions against them, all the way to the Supreme Court. If they lose there, then the switch to a cable-only network may be their only choice.

One thing remains certain: there are serious changes in the making with some serious money at stake.

Verizon and Amazon are taking different approaches to the issue of content. Verizon wants to pay for content based on viewership, an approach that has never appealed to content providers like the broadcast networks or the cable channels or the movie studios. The content providers, like The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), which owns ABC and ESPN, and CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) have resisted any attempt to split up their offerings in any way.

Amazon, following the path set out by Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), will produce 11 pilot programs of its own for its Amazon Prime viewers. The company plans to broadcast all the pilots and produce further installments of those that pull viewers.

Diller and IAC, through an investment in a small company called Aereo, is using a scheme that really outrages content providers. Aereo makes a small antenna that it uses to capture broadcast signals and then converts the signal to a stream than can be delivered over the Internet to any connected device. So far the system has only been tested in New York City, but Aereo is about to roll out the service in 22 cities. Aereo won a court battle last summer preventing an injunction against its plan, but the case has been appealed. This may be the biggest threat of all to the broadcast networks.

With assaults on the existing model of pay TV coming from every direction, about the only thing the content providers can do is resist on all fronts. Eventually, though, that strategy will cost the media firms viewers as consumers find their entertainment somewhere else.

Consumers are no longer willing simply to put up and shut up. They want access to TV shows, movies, music, and other content at the time and on the device of their choosing. The top-down model the networks and media companies like is eroding and they won’t be able to beat back every assault that’s coming.