Charles Ergen: Meet America's Richest Media Mogul You've Never Heard Of

The Forbes 400, Forbes' annual list of the 400 richest Americans, was released this week — and Forbes.com conveniently broke the list down by industry. Under the heading, "Informers & Performers," Forbes' media grouping includes all the usual suspects: Murdoch, Geffen, Redstone, Dolan, Oprah. But atop all of them is a man you've likely never heard of: Charles Ergen.

Worth $8.1 billion and ranked #35 on Forbes' list, Ergen is the man behind satellite giant EchoStar communications. Below, read his Forbes 400 listing:

#35 Charles Ergen

$8.1 billion

Source: EchoStar

Former pro poker player sold tv satellites from truck with wife in 1980s. Built EchoStar Communications (nasdaq: DISH - news - people ) into satellite giant; company commands 13.7 million subscribers today. Spun off cable box manufacturer EchoStar Corp. in January; shares of TV program provider Dish Network down 25% since. Still runs both companies. Suffered setback in race for high-definition TV dominance with DirecTV (nyse: DTV - news - people ) after $6 million satellite failed; launched another satellite this summer. Purchased Internet TV company Sling Media for $380 million last September.

Click through to read Forbes' entire list of media moguls.

Comments

[dotorfats]

Poor guy,vote for McCain and plese help cut this mans taxes.

[SwingVoter]

If he can do it, I can.

[bujeeboo]

Well, I'VE heard of him!

Ummm, okay. I've never heard of him.

[MIMom]

Actually, I really like my DISH, and the customer service has been awesome to me for the most part. Their voice prompts, though, are for the birds trying to GET to customer service.

Ergen also holds "Charlie Chats" on their info channel usually once a month. It is really boring and looks like it was done in a local access cable studio, but what other CEO sits down monthly and takes questions from viewers and updates them on what the company is doing?

DISH isn't a perfect system, but I would NEVER go back to cable.

[alanposting]

you sound like you have some connection with dish...... When you have to call 5 times to get your billing correct...your right, it is not a perfect system. I always felt it was being done on purpose, because I just could not believe such incompetence existed in a company.

[alanposting]

I'm sorry he got some of my money as a Dish subscriber. The service was awful especially their help center. They could not or did not want to ever get the billing correct...of course always in their favor. My life changed when I finally unplugged them.

[marlainWA]

I was without tv for almost 2 months while they sent new part that broke. Had nothing but problems with them and cancelled them 6 years ago and never went back.