Surprisingly, neither Dish nor DirectTV has gone bankrupt. Satellites are pretty capital-intensive. They both faced challenges over the years but have managed to skate by. AT&T kept DirectTV afloat for quite a while. The proposed DirectTV + Dish merger fell apart for multiple reasons. While the government didn't explicitly reject it, there was a lot of uncertainty about whether they would bless it. The deal also required Dish's bondholders to voluntarily write off a chunk of their debt, which they ultimately got cold feet about.