The comments came during a Thursday call on Ergen and other Dish executives took questions about the company’s latest earnings results, which fell short of analysts’ expectations.

While most of the call was dedicated to Dish’s high stakes bid for Sprint, which would give it the chance to offer mobile-broadband-TV packages, analysts also asked Ergen about his company’s ongoing spat with broadcasters. In recent months, Dish has incensed the networks by selling “the Hopper,” a popular product to skip commercials, and touched off rumors that it might buy Aereo, which allows viewers to watch TV on their phones for $8 a month.

On today’s call, however, Ergen sounded more conciliatory.

“We admire what [Aereo is] doing. We indirectly get a benefit as it puts downward pressure on retransmission consent fees.. But all things being equal, we’d prefer to work with the broadcasters,” he said. The broadcasters are equipped to do something themselves. We’re more likely to work with existing partners.”

The rhetoric is part of a complicated dance between pay TV providers, including Dish, and content owners over the spiraling cost of programming; in this struggle, services like the Hopper and Aereo have become a source of leverage for Dish.

On the call, Ergen repeated his call for smaller cable “bundles” and more a la carte offerings.

“At the end of the day, if the bundle price gets too high, [consumers] will find other ways to do it — they’ll use small antennas, they’ll steal programming.”

Ergen added that he believes the traditional dual stream model for TV, consisting of subscription and advertising revenue, will continue thanks to new mobile opportunities. In particular, he said that mobile viewing opened the prospect of valuable local-based ad targeting that will result in tailored ads being delivered to the living room, tablets and smartphones.

He added that some “forward looking broadcasters” were already on board in exploring new bundle opportunities with Dish.

“I’ve never met a programmer or broadcaster that was against making more money.”

The motion seeks to uncover “any ‘actual, contemplated, considered, or proposed’ business arrangements” between Aereo and Dish as well as “offers or expressions of interest by Dish in acquiring Aereo’s assets,” according to passages quoted by the Reporter. Of course, Dish doesn’t want any of those discussions to be public, which is why the company is now trying to quash the subpoena.

Dish’s Charlie Ergen has been very vocal in his support for new TV business and distribution models, going as far as saying that “a lot of customers can live with Netflix and an… antenna, and YouTube.” Dish could possibly use Aereo to build a cheaper TV bundle by bypassing retransmission payments to local broadcasters — or maybe just lower these payments by threatening such a course.

Make sure to check out our paidContent Live conference in New York this month if you want to learn more about Aereo’s potential to shake up the TV industry – I’ll be interviewing Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia on stage, and will make sure to quizz him about Dish as well.

Ergen also reiterated his position that a la carte programming would be better for consumers, as well as the industry itself. “We are still for a la carte, because the Internet is a la carte today,” he said. People could just watch Netflix, or even pirate content online, and service providers would have to compete with this new reality. “A lot of customers can live with Netflix and an… antenna, and YouTube…  and they’d be pretty happy,” he said.

However, Ergen cautioned the audience at Dive into Media that a la carte won’t become a reality anytime soon. “It’s gonna go there slowly,” he said, arguing that the major broadcasters won’t break the bundle willingly. It would be more likely that the bundle would be broken by outside forces like Amazon and Netflix.

Speaking of Netflix: Ergen was quite bullish when asked about the future of the video service. “I think they will be successful,” he said, adding that the launch of Netflix’s first original series House of Cards was “brilliant.”

He said that it would be possible for both Amazon and Netflix to succeed with their respective services – but it was quite clear that Ergen is rooting for Netflix: “I’m a fan,” he said, adding: “I feel stupid that we didn’t think of it first, but I’m a fan.”

The Hopper DVR lets users record television and then instantly fast-forward past all the commercials. Today, Dish put out a new ad (yes, there’s some irony here) that offered an “in memorium” for TV commercials — the concept is that sitting through commercials is something people did in the past but no more.

The Hopper’s ability to skip ads is the subject of a heated legal dispute between Dish and broadcasters. So far, courts have refused to issue a preliminary injunction to shut down the service for copyright reasons. ”The lawsuits going on today will ultimately decide the fate of commercials. Be careful what you wish for. If broadcsaters win, they’ll outlaw the DVR,” warned Ergen at the event. He says the service is legal under the law because it doesn’t erase the commercials, but simply lets consumers skip past them.

Some people in the Industry have suggested the fight over the Hopper is really a way for Dish to pressure broadcasters to lower retransmission fees — the money they charge Dish for the right to broadcast their over-the-air shows. While Ergen denied the Hopper is a leverage device, event host Peter Kafka pressed him on why the Hopper only fast-forwards past broadcast shows and not cable ones. Ergen claims this is due to technology limitations related to the way shows are streamed.

But a day later, during its own second quarter Come to Wall Street address, AMC Networks struck a contrarian tone: Not being in Dish’s 14 million homes since July 1 didn’t affect Q2 earnings, but Q3 will be a very different matter.

“Although Dish Network’s termination has reduced the company’s total subscribers by approximately 13 percent, the impact on our (cash flow) and operating income, if it continues, will be materially higher,” the company said in its Thursday earnings release.

Also read: Day 27 of the Dish vs. AMC standoff – where’s the subscriber revolt?

As for AMC’s second quarter performance, it wasn’t too shabby, with the company reporting a 53 percent spike in profit to $41.5 million on a 12.2 percent increase in revenue to $327.6 million.

Key revenue drivers remain ad sales and purchases of AMC’s critically lauded series, including Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead on disc, download and streaming.

Relative to other cable conglomerates, AMC Networks gets a smaller portion of its revenue from pay TV affiliate fees — an amount that totals only around $418 million a year, according to a memo put out last week by Lazar Capital analyst Barton Crockett.

Also read: Why Breaking Bad didn’t scare Dish, but Walking Dead will

With shows like Walking Dead becoming mainstream audience hits — the zombie series’ second-season premiere scored the biggest audience ever for a basic cable series last October — AMC is  trying to significantly increase its carriage fees in renewal talks.

But the conglomerate, spun off from Cablevision last year, claims it never even got to plead its case with Dish before the satellite carrier pulled its AMC flagship channel, along with the smaller IFC and WE TV, off its service on June 30.

AMC still insists that Dish is trying to drum up leverage for a separate legal matter — Cablevision and AMC are suing Dish for $2.5 billion for dropping the now-defunct Voom HD channels in 2008. Dish was ruled to have destroyed evidence in the case, which goes to trial in September.

Also read: AMC – “Dish never even talked rates with us”

If this is indeed factoring into settlement negotiations, Dish is doing little to reveal any progress made.

On Wednesday, Dish co-founder and chairman Ergen ramped up the rhetoric as only he can. Turns out the Englewood, Co.-situated Ergen family isn’t a fan of AMC series, even though they’ll collectively be up for 34 Emmys next month.

“I’ve had satellite television for as long as satellite television has been around, and there’s never been one minute that I know of anybody in my family, or anybody who’s came to my house, has ever watched one second of any of those channels,” Ergen told investors Wednesday.

“They’re critically acclaimed but not viewed as much by our audience,” he added. “And our customers can go to iTunes and get ‘Mad Men’ the same time it’s on.”

Ergen also claimed that Dish could pay the entire bill for his subscribers’ purchases of AMC series on iTunes and still come out ahead of paying AMC’s increased licensing fee.

Of course, it’s still early August. Ergen’s position could change on or before Sept. 18, when the Voom HD trial begins; or on or around Sept. 23, if Mad Men and Breaking Bad clean up at the Emmys; or on Oct. 15, when Nielsen’s Fast National ratings appear for the third-season Walking Dead premiere the night earlier.

Then there’s Dish’s own Q3 earnings. In an SEC filing made several weeks ago, Dish revealed that it only lost 10,000 subscribers in the second quarter, beating analysts forecast. It will no doubt be interesting to see what the company’s subscriber churn is during the current quarter with AMC not around.

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the Dish Network founder and chairman attempted to paint a new, highly controversial commercial-skipping feature in his company’s Hopper digital video recorders as a necessary innovation.

Also read: Dish defends ad-skipping DVR, pay TV peers throw it under bus

“Ultimately, broadcasters and advertisers have to change the way they do business or they run the risk of linear TV becoming obsolete,” Ergen told the paper.

But in the same interview, even the 59-year-old former pro gambler seemed to belie his own spin, tying the introduction of the new commercial-skipping feature to a motive that many have suspected all along: Dish wants leverage to drive down spiraling broadcast network retransmission fees.

“If the ad is skipped, the consumer likes it, but it’s not necessarily good for me and it’s not necessarily good for the broadcaster because I’m in the same ecosystem as him,” Ergen told the Journal while consuming a $2.98 pancake breakfast at his favorite place near Dish’s Englewood, Colo. headquarters:

“So we have to figure out how the broadcaster benefits, we benefit and the consumer continues to feel like he gets a fair deal. So maybe [the consumer] pays a little bit less for ‘retrans,’ his bill doesn’t go up by double digits every year … That’s an interesting conversation to have.”

One skeptical TV executive interviewed by the paper, when apprised that Ergen had described the commercial skipping as an innovation, said, ”That’s like putting nice drapery on top of a casket. It’s 99 percent more likely that the conversation … is about retransmission fees.”

Dish ignited a fire storm last month when it introduced a new feature called Auto Hop that deletes commercials from recordings of broadcast-network shows. The matter quickly moved to federal court, with the major networks suing satellite carrier, but not before it was able to sue them first in a pre-emptive move.

On Tuesday, Glenn Britt, chairman and CEO of the No. 4 pay TV service provider in the U.S., Time Warner Cable, became the first executive from the multi-channel industry to speak out about a controversial new feature in Dish’s Hopper digital video recorders. This feature filters out commercials from the recordings of broadcast-network shows.

“The dual stream of advertising and subscription fees has been great for content providers, and we don’t want to destroy one of those revenue streams,”Britt told a Cable Show audience, which included reporters from publications including Ad Age. “Subscription prices will go up or less content will be made.”

Also read: How broadcasters could have stopped Dish’s Hopper

Mark Greatrex, chief marketing officer for another top cable operator, Cox Communications, also weighed in: “As a marketer it’s not particularly helpful to bring that much uncertaintly into the marketplace.”

During upfront presentations to advertisers last week, virtually every broadcast network chief took verbal aim at the feature, with Fox and NBC even pledging not to let Dish run ads for it on their channels.

But speaking to Associated Press Tuesday, Vivek Khemka, Dish Network VP of product management for Dish, said they’ve got it all wrong.

By recording every minute broadcasted in prime time by ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, the Hopper is actually enabling consumers to watch more television. “It’s a win-win for consumers and the networks,” he said.

Of course, it’s hard to see how the networks are “winning” when a key aspect of their monetization model has been stripped away.

The other part of that model is the relatively new revenue stream created by broadcast networks demanding retransmission fees from the cable, satellite and telco TV service providers who offer their signals to subscribers.

With Dish trying to grow its current subscriber count of around 14 million, offering consumer-friendly features that let users skip ads probably helps. But all DVRs provided by multi-channel operators feature some level of commercial-skipping ability (it’s simply called fast-forward).

Questions that remain unanswered:

By throwing a Molotov Cocktail directly at broadcasters, might Dish be looking for a negotiating hedge against the Big Four Networks to help control fast-rising retransmission costs? And if so, might Dish have expected a little support from its peers in the multi-channel business?

If the answer turns out to be “yes” to the latter, it sure hasn’t received that support yet.

Speaking to investors Monday morning to discuss Dish’s first-quarter earnings report, Ergen said that digital distribution of shows including Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead is a key factor as to why Dish and series network AMC aren’t able to come to terms on a new carriage deal.

Also read: We’ve got hard data: Netflix really is killing Nickelodeon

“One of the things that programmers have done is they’ve devalued their programming content by making it available in multiple outlets,” Ergen said. “Our customers are not really saying ‘we want to pay more money,’ they’re saying ‘we want more flexibility in our programming and we don’t want to pay more.’

“From a timing perspective that is just a contract that we can change,” Ergen added. “We believe the product has been devalued, not that there are not some good programs, but it’s been devalued because you can get it multiple ways and customers have more flexibility to get the programming. It’s not quite the same as if something were exclusive.”

Dish officials say that pending renewal of an agreement, flagship channel AMC, as well as Sundance Channel, WE tv and IFC, will go dark for the satellite service’s nearly 14 million subscribers on July 1.

Dish’s carriage accounts for around 15 percent of AMC’s base of nearly 96 million homes. According to data provided by SNL Kagan, AMC commands carriage fees that average around 25 cents per subscriber. And AMC annually commands around $300 million in total affiliate revenue.

For its part, AMC claims the Dish’s position is influenced by litigation between the two parties over the now-defunct Voom Networks. Last week, a New York appeals court denied Dish’s bid to continue the $2.5 billion breach-of-contract case, ruling that the satellite provider had destroyed evidence.

With AMC seeking to as much as triple its current carriage deal, Dish contends it’s position is just about business — AMC’s ratings, it says, don’t merit an increase.

But that argument holds only so much water.

As Adweek noted, stellar ratings performances for shows like The Walking Dead spurred 33 percent audience growth in the key adults 18-49 demographic for AMC in the first quarter. The network now significantly out-delivers news channels like CNN and Fox News Channel in that demo, even though those networks respectively command much higher carriage fees of 54 cents and 78 cents per subscriber.

The move mirrors his action with EchoStar (NSDQ: SATS), when he stepped aside as president and CEO in 2009.

Release.

The decision by Dish and EchoStar to settle comes after an appellate court affirmed an earlier ruling that Dish and EchoStar were in contempt of a permanent injunction against using technology patented by TiVo in the DVRs they produced or distributed.

Struggling TiVo won repeated victories in court but had to borrow $150 million in March to cover legal costs for this and other patent litigation. Dish Network faced crippling penalties, including a court-ordered shutdown of all of its DVRs and a cost that could be as high as $1 billion. As Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett pointed out the day of the last ruling:

“Faced with an imminent shut-down of millions of DVRs (the precise number has never been disclosed), we believe Dish will be faced with a gun-to-the-head settlement requirement.”

The need to settle was compounded by Dish CEO Charlie Ergen’s plans for expansion beyond satellite distribution. Only last month, Dish acquired bankrupt Blockbuster at auction for $315 million, announcing plans to keep the retail video chain open while expanding its digital programming, The TiVo settlement includes a mention of Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) as an example of how TiVo and Dish can collaborate, in this case with TiVo playing “a role” in promoting and developing the Blockbuster digital video service.

The first $300 million payment is due today; the remaining $200 million is to be paid out $33.3 million at a time in six equal payments starting next year and ending in 2017. SEC filing; joint press release.

In the end, it is not a lot of money. As Moffett says, the amount was “for far less” than expected. From his client note, which also picked up on Dish’s positive earnings report this morning:

“It finally eliminates, after nearly five years, a significant overhang that in a worst case scenario could have meant disablement of potentially millions of DVRs, triggering a consequent exodus of DVR subscribers.

The modest price tag on the settlement suggests that the number of boxes covered by the original disablement injunction was likely at the low end of estimates. In the absence of a settlement, the en banc court order to revisit the infringement of subsequent software workarounds would have meant yet another long and uncertain process of litigation.

More to come.