from what it looks like, it's just going to be the games, the rest of the stuff will probably just be other root sports stuff so yeah, less houston centric.
I get a bunch of regional sports networks with my package with Dish. Looking at Root Sports Pittsburgh, they have SOME local shows like "Inside Pirates Baseball", ACC Gridiron Live", "Mike Tomlin Show", "Mike Tomlin Press Conference", shows about Pitt, Notre Dame, Penn State, etc. So that might be an indication of what to expect with Root Sports Houston.
Well it's more Houston centric than what i have right now which is no games at all. They do have some original programming and I know Root NW does some local programming (pre/post game stuff) but I expect a ton of infomercials.
I think the majority would be happy to just watch our major league sport teams. It sucks losing the local coverage but ultimately I just want to watch the Rockets. Not like I sit watching TV all day anyways.
Gonna miss Leila Radium, not to mention nice to look at too. What about dat HoChen? And Calvin Murphy? Or Kevin Eschenfelder? Sucks for them, But I'm just happy I'm going to be able to watch games on DirecTV and not streaming on my computer
I could care less about the rest of the programming. The games are what matter. Sorry to hear folks are being let go though.
D@mn, HoChen was the best at reading those Tweets. Hopefully Adam Wexler stays and improves his Twitter game
For Directv you usually get a base regional Root sports network and another channel that only broadcasts pre and post game shows + the games then stops broadcasting to conserve satellite bandwidth.
HoChen actually expanded his game and was doing a solid job of covering high school football and the recruiting process. In fact, most of these people were doing a fantastic job of forging a houston-centric sports station. Really sucks to see them go...ATT/DirectTV don't know what they are doing
Sounds impossible, but it would be better to keep CSN and broadcast to everyone. The channel is freakin awesome. All the local sports basically 24/7. Hate to see it go.
I've wondered about this before. Is it totally unreasonable to make an OTA version of CSN? the ad revenue alone would be substantially greater and literally everyone would be able to watch in HD. This needs to happen
It does suck to see great reporters get axed, but AT&T/Direct TV know exactly what they're doing. The bottom line is that this was a value experiment, and it failed in Houston. To have the type of reporting that CSN had, you have to have an extensive staff and payroll, which means fairly lofty per-subscriber rates are necessary in order to make the economics work. In the end, not enough cable subscribers in the Houston area cared enough to switch or put significant pressure on the non-Comcast providers. It's free market principles in action, and the demand just wasn't enough. AT&T/DTV didn't buy the network simply to keep it as-is. They've basically laughed at the rumored proposals ($3,40/subscriber, I think it was?) for two years, never coming all that close to an agreement. They don't see the programming as worthwhile to them (and their customers) at that price point, and whether the network is called CSN Houston or Root Sports Houston doesn't change the underlying fundamentals at all. Who the owner is and the name on the network -- that's largely cosmetic. From a practical standpoint, AT&T/DTV think that a scaled-down model that largely focuses on just the local professional games -- and thus a lower price point in carriage negotiations with providers -- is the way to go in this market. Considering all that's happened since October 2012, I have a hard time disagreeing with that.
Too bad consumers did not support the great station we had. Now AT&T and dish who don't really care about Houston sports will ruin the local content. We have only consumers to blame. Not enough true local sports fans to bring AT&T to the table to pay the fee to keep the network going.
All sports fans wanted CSN, the problem is the significant price difference between Direct TV vs Comcast. Customers would likely pay an extra $10/month for the channel, but not $40+. In the end, if Root Sports is very similar to CSN, I'm good.
I disagree. Local programming does not require extensive staff or payroll. That part of programming is pennies compared to the overall budget. But make no mistake AT&T will squeeze every penny out of the network. It certainly is a bare bones business model. But you are right that there simply was not enough consumer demand for the product which is why we lose that content. Supply and demand.
