In May, while answering questions during an earnings call for Dish Network Corp., chairman Charlie Ergen let fly his Seinfeld strategy for corporate development. For the first 28 minutes, viewers haven't a clue where the show's going, he said. "But it seems to all come together in the last couple of minutes."

Although an analyst wanted to know which Seinfeld episode applied most directly to Dish -- the country's No. 2 satellite broadcaster, with 14 million subscribers -- a more relevant question might be: When, for Dish, will those last two minutes begin?

The answer: They already have. Or so Ergen effectively announced on Nov. 7 when he said during Dish's latest earnings call, "We believe we have to be in something other than a standalone video business as a company, and we are in the transition of being able to do that."

This is no mere acknowledgment that the U.S.'s leading multichannel video-programming distributors (that's cable companies and sat broadcasters to you and me) had better start protecting their turf. Nor is it a cry for strategies like "TV Everywhere" and other defensive tactics designed to placate authenticated MVPD subscribers by allowing them to access video content online as well as on TV.

No, what Ergen's saying is that over-the-top media (shorthand for digital content distributed through broadband connections already in place) has not only arrived but is already wreaking havoc. It's not just OTT pioneers such as Hulu LLC, Netflix Inc. and YouTube LLC making inroads against once imperturbable MVPD oligarchies. It's also "new entrants," as Ergen called them, like Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Google Inc. "When someone can buy Netflix for $7.99, do they really want to pay $14.99 for HBO?" Ergen offered as an example of what may kill cable's premium tier. "Every time somebody subscribes to Netflix, it's probably half of a customer that our industry loses."

Ergen has been pondering that half of a customer for some time. On the year-earlier earnings call, he admitted: "My kids think I'm crazy for being in the Pay TV business, because they don't pay for TV. They don't pay for movies. But they watch an awful lot of TV and movies."

Then, barely a moment later, Ergen compared the business models of Dish and leading sat broadcaster DirecTV Inc. with those of OTT counterparts. After noting that each sat broadcaster had to launch 10 satellites at $3 billion apiece, he concluded with an almost discernible sense of defeat, "You're better off starting Netflix and saving your $3 billion for servers and programming contracts."

Which is what Ergen did, practically speaking, on taking Blockbuster LLC out of bankruptcy last April for the net sum of $234 million. He started Dish's transition from standalone video he no longer considers sufficient to streaming video à la Hulu, Netflix and YouTube. He took another step in October by launching Blockbuster Movie Pass. This DVD-streaming combo service began as a $10 monthly add-on for existing Dish subscribers and as a promotional freebie to new Dish customers. But Ergen & Co. promised at the outset -- fortuitously coincident with the Netflix-Qwikster brouhaha afflicting its leading OTT rival -- that Blockbuster would soon stream content to non-Dish customers, too.

Dish and former parent EchoStar Corp., whose hardware divisions were spun off in 2008, have been active on other fronts as well. With Ergen running both, they've been buying wireless spectrum, reducing sports programming, experimenting with premium channels as promotional tools and, through the acquisition of Sling Media Inc., trying to perfect video place-shifting products.

The last half-decade also witnessed unsuccessful attempts by Ergen to buy broadcast-TV group ION Media Networks Inc., sat-radio broadcaster Sirius XM Radio Inc. and video streamer Hulu. This charging off in every which direction prompted Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett to ask in the headline of an update published in March: "What Is Charlie Thinking?"

While the question still can't be completely answered, Dish's recent earnings call got us close. Ergen wants to hedge his sat-broadcasting operation against OTT alternatives that are stealing eyeballs by the millions. Yet he also wants to hedge his own OTT operation against price hikes that broadband providers are certain to institute as they devolve into dumb and dumber pipes. As for the other loose ends -- spectrum, takeover, new-product, programming-reduction plays -- sit tight. This Seinfeld episode still has two minutes to go.

Richard Morgan covers media for The Deal magazine.