Never heard of these services? How about if I called them DIRECTV and DISH? On a lazy day in December 2013, I brought you the history of these services and their names. I’m reprinting it here, mostly because it’s a lazy day in February, 2022.
When it comes to your favorite TV provider, some names are pretty obvious, some not. After all, millions of dollars are spent on product launches, which sort of begs the questions of how anyone could come up with names like “hulu.”
Introducing Direct Broadcast Satellite
DIRECTV plays on the term used in the 1990s for satellite TV, “Direct Broadcast Satellite.” Although practically no one uses the term DBS anymore, it is a fair description of the difference between modern satellite TV and the alternatives at the time. Back then, most of the satellite dishes belonged to cable companies, and those that did not belonged to hobbyists. Satellite service was really more narrowcasting than broadcasting, as it was accessible to only a few people.
At the time they launched, their logo looked like this.
DIRECTV’s idea was to cut out the middleman (no one really likes middlemen) and bring you the same programming as the cable company, straight to your home. It really was “direct tv.” DIRECTV’s logo is a clever mix of the letter D and a cyclone (the white part is what is supposed to look like a cyclone.) If you think it’s a little weird that a company would purposely compare themselves to a destructive force of nature, this was in the days before superstorms were common, and today DIRECTV doesn’t use the term “cyclone” except internally.
Introducing Digital Satellite Home
The name DISH, though seemingly straightforward, is actually even more convoluted in its history. The company once known as DiSH Network used “dish” as both a backronym (an acronym built specifically to make a specific word, like Marvel’s SHIELD) and to indicate the dish antenna itself.
If you look at the DISH logo you’ll see that there really isn’t an “I”. The “I” is formed from the satellite dish beaming from space. DiSH originally stood for Digital Satellite Home, which was really just another way of saying Digital Broadcast Satellite. Like DIRECTV’s cyclone, DISH’s attempt at a clever acronym isn’t mentioned much anymore.
DISH also rebranded itself a few years ago. When it comes to their service, they dropped “Network” from the name. They still use DISH Network in a corporate context, though. They also got rid of the now-dated oval that seemed to take over graphic design in the mid-1990s. This move makes sense since they were never really a single network anyway.
In the last several years DISH has made steps to become a wireless services company. That’s why it wouldn’t surprise me to see even more changes to its identity. The current identity is completely tied to the idea of satellite. Still, at least the current presentation is very clean and attractive.
