Ergen Needs Creditors He Once Spurned to Seal Dish-DirecTV Deal

(Bloomberg) — Charlie Ergen’s decades-long dream to combine his satellite-TV company Dish Network Corp. with rival DirecTV hinges on the willingness of creditors he has irked in the past to write off part of their investment in the heavily indebted company.

Dish and DirecTV agreed on Monday to merge and create the biggest US pay-TV provider, in a move designed to help both companies better compete in an increasingly crowded TV landscape that’s been disrupted by streaming.