SATELLITE TV

The game is direct-broadcast stud. The potential stakes? The US television market. And the man with two aces showing is EchoStar CEO Charlie Ergen. Or that's the way the game looks after Ergen cut a November deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and MCI/WorldCom to buy the final orbital slot for high-powered satellitecasts to North America. If the Feds approve, the $1.25 billion purchase will give EchoStar two of the three slots (the third belongs to DirecTV) and the ability to bathe American viewers in 500 channels of broadcasting.

There's an ironic edge to the upstart's apparent triumph: EchoStar once teamed up with Murdoch in ASkyB, a satellite venture that News Corp. hoped would extend its broadcast empire to the US. When the relationship soured, Ergen filed a $5 billion lawsuit that stopped ASkyB in its tracks.

With the November deal, which gives News Corp. a minority stake in EchoStar, the underdog and the mogul have traded places: Ergen, not Murdoch, is now at the forefront of what's been sold as the world's first ultrasatellite service.

Early signals suggest that federal regulators have no problem with the EchoStar-News Corp. arrangement, seeing it as increasing competition for cable operators. And Ergen declares his mission is exactly that: "All we want to do," he says, "is compete against cable."

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