Dish Network today reported a dip in first quarter revenue, profits and subscribers. The company said revenues hit $3.56 billion, slightly off the $3.58 billion the company reported in the same quarter last year. The company attributed the decline in part to the ailing Blockbuster segment. 

Meanwhile the Dish home Internet and satellite TV segment increased 4 percent annually to $3.35 billion from $3.22 billion in the year ago quarter.

Net income attributable to Dish Network totaled $216 million for the quarter, down from $360 million from the year-ago quarter. The company attributed to the loss to decrease in profits to higher subscriber-related expenses driven by increased programming and subscriber acquisition costs. 

Dish also noted that last year's first quarter results boosted by a non-cash gain of $99 million related to the conversion of certain DBSD North America notes.

Dish managed to add about 654,000 gross new pay-TV subscribers compared to approximately 673,000 gross new pay-TV subscribers in the prior year's first quarter. Net subscribers grew by approximately 36,000 in the first quarter. 

Overall, the company closed the first quarter with 14.092 million pay-TV subscribers compared to 14.071 million pay-TV subscribers at the end of first quarter 2012.

Today's numbers come amid Dish's recent $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel, which the company hopes would help it diversify into the wireless space and put to use a large swath of AWS spectrum that Dish owns.  

This week Sprint said it would hold off on offering Dish financial information about its business until Dish further elaborated on how its offer will be funded and how it will create cost savings. 

Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son have traded arguments and not-so-subtle jabs at each other’s companies recently. On Tuesday, Son explained SoftBank’s expertise in deploying TD-LTE in the 2.5 GHz spectrum made it the superior suitor for Sprint. Sprint is in talks to buyout WiMax wholesaler Clearwire, a deal that if approved, could grant Sprint access to Clearwire’s large holdings in the 2.5 GHz EBS band.

Son went on to rebutt Ergen’s suggestion that a domestic company like Dish would make a better Sprint buyer as American jobs would be safer in that scenario. Son reassured the media that SoftBank would keep those Sprint jobs in the hands of U.S. employees.

Sprint shareholders are expected to vote June 12 on the SoftBank bid.

Shares of Dish were down just under 4 percent to $38.20 at the opening bell.