Ergen Could Be Serious About Sirius; CEO of EchoStar & Dish Network may need the troubled radio company as bad as Sirius needs h

No one is a bigger tightwad than Charlie Ergen. The 55-year-old Ergen, poker-playing former financial analyst for Frito-Lay, got his start in satellite TV by selling one of those giant backyard dishes from the back of a pickup. Even after he built Dish Network into the fastest-growing satellite TV company, he insisted that even his top execs fly coach and stay two to a hotel room when traveling. So it's no surprise that Ergen saw opp in scooping up debt held by troubled satellite radio company Sirius XM. Wall Street sources say Ergen bought the bonds on the cheap as a possible precursor to a takeover. Talk about a skinflint entree to a new, if struggling, business. But the purchases are more than a bargain hunt. Ergen may need Sirius as badly as the near-bankrupt radio company may need him. Dish Network, after years of gaining on cable companies and outpacing rival DirecTV, fallen hard from its orbit. Dish recently lost its alliance with AT&T, which bundled Dish's service with its phone offerings. The partnership accounted for much of what little growth Dish registered in its 13.7M subscriber base. Worse, AT&T now works with DirecTV, leaving Dish with no large phone company to help goose sales. In the quarter that ended Sept. 30, Dish lost 10,000 subscribers. The company's 9% earnings increase, to $223.7 M, was mostly a result of increasing customers' bills -- not exactly a recipe for long-term success, especially in a market where consumers are curtailing nonessential spending.