If you’re a Dish Network subscriber eagerly anticipating the next season of Mad Men or The Walking Dead, I’m sorry to inform you that you will no longer see these shows on Dish as they’ve cut ties with AMC Network.

In their official announcement, Dish informed their subscribers that they will be replacing  three AMC Networks channels — IFC, WE and AMC.  They will replace AMC with  HDNet Movies, and Style and HDNet to replace WE and IFC.

“A significant portion of any pay-TV bill goes to fees for content providers like AMC Networks,” said Dave Shull, senior vice president of programming for DISH. “AMC Networks requires us to carry low-rated channels like IFC and WE to access a few popular AMC shows. The math is simple: it’s not a good value for our customers.”

Dish’s reason for not renewing AMC’s contract was due to “the channels’ high costs compared to their relatively low viewership.”  Really?  Mad Men and The Walking Dead have low viewership?  I beg to differ.  The Walking Dead is so popular right now their second season premiere even generated  11 million viewers.  And Mad Men?  That show reels in an elite but numerically finite audience.

Another reason why Dish dropped AMC was because they felt the offering their shows on iTunes, Netflix and Amazon devalued their programming.

“One of AMC’s biggest historical draws has been movies. However, their performance has been trumped by other DISH movie offerings, including the many thousands of titles available on Blockbuster@Home and from top-quality providers such as HBO, Showtime, Starz, EPIX, MGM HD, IndiePlex, and RetroPlex,” Shull said.

AMC believes that their contract wasn’t renewed not because of low viewership but because of another case that the two are entangled in – the Voom HD debacle.  AMC negotiated with AT&T to keep their channels on U-Verse.

“Dish customers have lost some of their favorite shows because of an unrelated lawsuit which has nothing at all to do with our programming,” the AMC statement reads. “Dish customers will not be able to watch the new season of AMC’s Breaking Bad, premiering July 15, or upcoming seasons of The Walking Dead, Mad Men, or any of our other popular shows. We urge Dish customers who want to have access to our programming to call 1-855-KEEP-AMC or visit www.keepamc.com.”

So what are Mad Men and The Walking Dead fans supposed to do now?  First, you can support AMC’s petition for subscribers to drop Dish and find another cable operator that offers AMC’s channels.  Second, you can find other sources to watch your favorite AMC shows.

Other options for AMC

You can download your favorite episodes from iTunes, Amazon, Vudu or stream from Netflix for a fee.  But because not everyone would be happy to pay just to watch a single episode of their favorite show, here are some suggestions: go to Sidereel or Clicker and find your favorite AMC shows.  Some of them are offered for a fee or you can search links within the sites to find free sites.  That could take a while since most of the links there have been taken down due to copyright infringing.