Now, here's the catch! (Yes, Madeline, there's ALWAYS a catch!)

The 3 months of free programming come with a 24 month term agreement. (I cannot stress the importance of it enough: read your Customer Agreement!)

Understanding your Customer Agreement will lessen the misunderstandings and headaches.

A credit of $39.99 will be applied to customer’s 1st, 10th, and 20th month of service for a total value up to $119.97.

* Applicable to qualifying new customers with a 24-month term agreement,

* Customer must maintain AT100 or higher, DishLATINO or higher, or qualifying DishINTERNATIONAL programming,

* Offer is not available with DishFAMILY

Expiring Promotional Offers - The following promotions will expire January 31st, 2008

* DishHD Free for 6 Months

* HBO and Cinemax Free for 3 Months

* DishLATINO $10 for 10 Months

* DishINTERNATIONAL $10 for 10 Months

Good News, Bad News

While the longer contract of 24 months versus 18 months may not be to your liking, it is actually, dollar for dollar, a lot better than the old contract. Think about this a minute and do the math.

The good news is that with the 24 month committment, DISH Network will waive the $49.99 Activation Fee. While this looks good on the surface, remember also that new accounts won't see a credit for the same amount on their first month's bill. Okay... zero going in, zero going out. It's final, and it's even.

Overall, DISH Network has a much better repertoire of entertainment packages than DirecTV. Viewing a few comparison charts can give you a quick overview of the differences between DISH Network and DirecTV.

From local channels to cultural and international channels, DISH Network has a much better - and economical - set of packages from which to choose. DISH Network, truly, beats the competition "hands down." When it comes to package pricing, again, DISH Network beats the competition on price.

Do you like SIRIUS Music? Well, you can get that with DISH Network, but you can't get it with DirecTV. Order online? DISH Network, yes. DirecTV? Contact a dealer.

DISH Network will still deliver, install, and maintain their equipment for free. And now, with the 24 month contract, there will be no deposit. Not so with DirecTV. Last time I checked, DirecTV was still wanting almost $400 deposit for their equipment. Maybe I just called the wrong call center; who knows.

Funny I should mention this, but about a year ago I received a flier in the mail from DirecTV claiming to beat the competition on price. Well, the only competition DirecTV has is DISH Network. I also received an ad from DISH Network on the same day, and laid the two ads side by side on my dining room table. I didn't have to cock my head to see a glaring difference and quite a lot of untruth in DirecTV's ad. They weren't cheaper. As a matter of fact, they were $10 more expensive on their basic package, and as much as $20 higher on their premium package.

Needless to say, when I started pointing this out in my marketing campaigns, I saw subsequent ads come in with a "corrected" price and ad copy.

Hmmm... I don't think my marketing campaigns had anything to do with their sudden price change, but it would be nice to think so.

Overall, J.D. Powers still rates DISH Network Number One in customer satisfaction and service. Not to be prejudiced, while DISH Network has a lot of positives going for them, DirecTV has their strengths, too. Ordering online with both services is pretty much a "given" in that you can do it 24 hours a day. However, if you call in your order to a call center, Cannon DirecTV does not have a 24 hour call center. Their call center shuts down at midnight Eastern Standard Time Zone.

DISH Network at http://www.QuestarSatellite.com operates their call centers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You can configure your order online with Questar Satellite, whereas with Cannon DirecTV you cannot.

And there is the "catch"... the consumer benefits with DISH Network is much better. But, you take your pick. Do it before February 17, 2009, because that is when broadcasters go 100% digital. If you don't have satellite or cable by then, you could be without TV.

Search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo haven’t figured it out yet…

The National Real Estate Pages have come in like the “new kid” on the block and just “strummed” the neighborhood bully. Google is still trying to figure out how, and why they can’t drive local traffic to the county and city level like NationalRealEstatePages.com.

By the time they figure it out, it will be too late for the search engines.

Now, buyers and sellers can go directly to their county and city and list their homes or search for one for free.

When National Real Estate Pages launched their flagship site on September 19, 2007, they immediately started seeing an explosion of traffic to their site. The bandwidth on the servers were experiencing traffic from, not only the United States, but from foreign countries.

The National Real Estate Pages is only the first of 300 unique ULS (Universal Local Search) sites, which allow users to search for real estate in their local areas at the city and county level. The National Real Estate Pages is a new search technology that brings all local real estate properties and service providers together into one, easy to navigate site, eliminating the need to search the Internet for hours on end.

“Think of it like your Yellow Pages, the classifieds, or CraigsList for all your real estate needs” says Fred Miller, Founder and CEO.

National Real Estate Pages is increasing in exponential exposure and visits each day on raw “viral” search — without going through search engines. They have had over 1 million unique visits in the last 90 days from over 40 different countries.

Residential and commercial real estate for sale and rent, apartment and vacation rentals, ranch and rural properties, land for sale or lease, investment properties for sale or lease, business opportunities for sale, foreclosures, short sales, and FSBO (For Sale By Owners), as well as a comprehensive directory of all real estate related service providers can all be found on one site.

“The best part of all is it’s free for those that want to list their properties for sale or rent” says Miller. “We believe that the most efficient and logical way for sellers, landlords and agents to market their properties on the net is to bring the consumers to their products, not to bring the products to the consumer. By putting your inventory and services in one place, you make it easy for the consumer to find you, ‘one site fits all.’ It’s like a local, virtual shopping mall for everything real estate related,” says Miller.

Each property listing will be featured with 10 photos, virtual tours links and can easily be searched by area, price, size etc. as well as a convenient mapping feature.

Each county site will have 50 industry exclusive slots for businesses that want to target consumer traffic that is coming to each of the sites.

Ernest ODell - Editor In Chief, National Real Estate Pages - http://dmsgroup.tripod.com/nationalrealestatepages or http://www.nationalrealestatepages.com/