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DirecTV announced Monday that it is buying rival Dish Network, ending several decades of satellite service merger talks.

In the streaming age, companies are finding it difficult to retain their subscribers. As platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon’s Prime Video have gained traction, pulling millions of subscribers away from pay TV with lower prices and on-demand content, DirecTV and Dish are finding it increasingly difficult to justify rising subscription costs, which they already do already dramatic stress made even worse – cutting.

The companies said that “the combination of DirecTV and Dish will benefit U.S. video consumers by creating stronger competitive power in a video industry dominated by streaming services from major technology companies and programmers.”

Under the agreement, DirecTV will pay Dish owner EchoStar just $1 for Dish in exchange for assuming its billions of dollars in debt.

Meanwhile, private equity firm TPG will acquire AT&T’s remaining 70 percent stake in DirecTV. The move comes nine years after AT&T bought the company in 2015 and then sold a 30% stake to TPG in 2021, a DirecTV spokesperson told CNN.

The deal still depends on Dish’s bondholders agreeing on net debt of less than $1.56 billion, which the company plans to secure in the coming weeks, according to a DirecTV spokesman. Bondholders can accept a lower percentage, take a slightly higher percentage today or wait, which risks Dish going bankrupt. Dish announced an exchange offer in a press release on Monday.

Dish currently has a $2 billion debt payment due on November 23rd. To secure financing through a shared revenue stream, TPG and DirecTV will provide Dish with a $10 billion loan that will allow the company to repay its debt on November 24th.

The agreement gives DirecTV and Dish greater reach, a DirecTV spokesperson told CNN. From an investment perspective, the combined company provides a more reliable source of income to invest in products and services, which is beneficial for programmers like Disney. This will also allow the new company, as a video company, to better collaborate with programmers to create more streamlined packages and bundles.

The newly merged DirecTV-Dish company will continue to support the Dish brand for the foreseeable future, the DirecTV spokesman said. DirecTV currently has no plans to make any changes to the existing Dish or Sling TV brands, meaning current Dish customers shouldn’t be afraid to switch to DirecTV.

If they were combined, the new service would have about 20 million subscribers, with DirecTV accounting for over 11 million of those. But that number pales in comparison to DirecTV’s peak TV subscriber base of 20.3 million in 2015, when AT&T bought a majority stake in the company.

DirecTV was founded in 1994 by Hughes Electronics. AT&T bought the company in 2015 and sold part of the company to private equity firm TPG in 2021.

Dish Network is a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (SATS), which also owns Sling TV and wireless spectrum rights for cell phone communications. Shares rose nearly 3% in premarket trading.

Reports and rumors about a merger have been circulating for years. In 2014, Bloomberg reported that former Dish chairman Charlie Ergen had reached out to former DirecTV CEO Mike White.

However, the US government had previously blocked a planned merger of the companies worth US$19 billion in 2002 for competition reasons. Echostar had to pay a $600 million breakup fee to Hughes, which was then owned by General Motors.

Monday’s agreement offers DirecTV a way to cut rising costs while also giving EchoStar a way to address its debt problem. The deal also strengthens the duo’s position in the industry, allowing them to more easily compete with pay-TV rivals and streaming services.

Antitrust regulators’ wariness of satellite television mergers dates back to a time when such companies were the only providers available to viewers in suburban and rural areas, which tended to be less densely populated and not supported by cable networks because of high infrastructure costs.

But as broadband companies increasingly offer a wide range of solutions to remote viewers, the competitive impact of such mergers has become less acute.

This story has been updated with additional developments and context.