As the young viewers continue to abandon television for the Internet, satellite providers like Dish Network are faced with some challenges. Charles Ergen, Dish Network’s chairman is one of the few executives willing to confront the problem.

During Dish Network’s earnings meeting last week, Ergen told analysts that younger viewers that grew up with the Internet “go to Hulu, and they go to network programming from Hulu, and they get Netflix.”

Since cable providers like Comcast (News - Alert) and others bundle TV and Internet services into one package, these companies are better able to retain younger viewers, whereas satellite providers offer TV services only.

Dish lost 111,000 subscribers over the quarter, however, the company hasn’t invested any large amounts of money on new projects, making its investors more comfortable.

To help solve the problem of fewer subscribers and decreasing profits, Dish is searching for new ways to capture some of the young Internet viewers—including those who already subscribe to Dish, as well as those who don’t.

Last August, Dish Network announced its plans for a nationwide wireless network, but so far, the company hasn’t shared any information about what it plans to do or how they’re going to do it. Although a wireless network would cost billions of dollars, it would give Dish a competitive advantage and allow the company to offer bundled TV/Internet services to its customers.

Apparently Dish is also considering Internet video as a part of its strategy. In order to compete with companies like Netflix, Wal-Mart, and Amazon, Dish has also purchased Blockbuster’s assets and began using the company’s brand to roll out a streaming video service to compete with and others

Currently, Netflix has about 20,000 movies available for streaming on the Internet, and Dish has about 3,000. To date, every option for a wireless network is very expensive, and stockholders sent Dish shares higher after its disappointing earnings announcement.

According to Tierna Ray of Barrons, Dish Network declared a special dividend, “helping to allay some investors’ fears of reckless spending.”

Netflix may be going through some rough times, but it has about 20,000 movies available for streaming, whereas Dish has about 3,000, and getting the rights to more movies will cost them a bundle.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Dish is in the “exploratory” stages of licensing television programming to deploy over the Internet through a pay service, and Ergen has apparently approached several media companies with the idea, but again, such endeavors will cost the company a lot of money to implement.