Mike Snider

USA TODAY

Satellite TV service Dish Network is trimming the size of its programming bundle.

Beginning today, Dish Network now offers a smaller bundle of TV channels starting at $39.99 monthly. The new Flex Pack has more than 50 channels including AMC, CNN, Food Network, FX and USA. Most notably, the Flex Pack does not include ESPN.

However, customers can customize their bundle by adding one or more packages of additional channels for $4 to $10 monthly, including a National Action Pack ($10 per month) with ESPN, ESPN2, Fox Sports 1 and several other channels.

And the initial $39.99 monthly fee comes with one programming package of the customer's choice. That could be the ESPN-inclusive National Action pack, a package of local channels or one of kids' programming, for instance.

Traditional Dish programming packages start at $54.99. To get the lowest $39.99 price on the new skinny bundle, Dish customers must sign up for electronic billing and Auto Pay. If they choose not to, the skinny bundle price is $5 higher. You can also add premium channels such as HBO and Showtime.

The skinny bundle comes with a standard receiver; for a more souped-up Hopper 3 DVR, add another $10 monthly. (Go to Dish.com for more on programming options.)

"It's really an attempt to give consumers a little more choice," said Warren Schlichting, Dish's executive vice president of marketing, programming and media sales. "The number one consumer complaint that we hear is that people are buying hundreds of channels that they never watch. Our sort of internal mantra here has been, 'Don’t watch. Don’t pay.'"

Cutting the Cord: Keeping pace with the Olympics

Pay-TV services have begun experimenting with smaller "skinny" programming bundles as a way to counter the trend of some customers to drop -- or never subscribe to -- traditional pay TV in favor of Net TV providers such as Netflix, Amazon Video and Hulu.

Last year, Comcast launched its $15 monthly Stream TV service with local channels and HBO delivered over broadband, while Verizon started offering its Custom TV packages with local broadcast networks and smaller collections of channels starting at $64.99. Dish itself has its own Sling TV service, starting at $20 monthly, with 25-plus channels.

Dish also announced a deal to bring NFL Network and NFL RedZone channels back to its satellite TV subscribers after a two-month carriage dispute. Those channels will be available to Sling TV subscribers, too.

The skinny bundle price of $40-$50 falls well below Dish Network's average customer monthly bill. The satellite TV provider got about $90 per subscriber ($89.98) in the second quarter of 2016, up from $87.91 in the same period a year ago, the Englewood, Colo.-based company said two weeks ago in its quarterly earnings report.

Dish also saw its total subscriber base drop slightly to 13.6 million subscribers, down from 13.9 million a year ago (the company does not break out Dish vs. Sling TV subs).

Customers want to be able to tailor their programming, Schlichting said. "The industry as a whole has jammed people into these giant packages of channels and it’s not a one-size-fits-all population that we have," he said. "(With) Sling we started to see that we had found a rich vein of demand and so we are trying to take some of those learnings and bring those back to traditional television."

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider