Steve Bunin has joined CSN Houston. Formerly of ESPN as an Anchor on Sports Center and a fill in on Outside The Lines. This is a Big Move and somebody get me Tiffany Blackmon number
I would suggest burning Alexander and Crane in effigy. With lots of flames and smoke, the news cameras love that kind of thing.
The trick with this kind of this is to get the news to cover it as news, instead of trying to 'market' it. P.T. Barnum used this technique to great success, so did Harry Houdini. They would stage some kind of controversy in a town in which they were shortly to appear, with the circus or with an act. In each case, someone would make some sort of scandalous outrageous charges, threaten a lawsuit or worse, some kind of violent confrontation. In any case, the big controversy would be all in the news, and when they arrived in town, people had been worked into a frenzy, and it cost them not a single dime in advertising. So the idea would be to try to come up with some way to make this thing a news event instead of an advertising issue. Exactly what would work for this issue, I don't know for sure, but with the demented imaginations of people around here, not to mention how irate people are already, I bet someone could come up with something that would catch the news' attention. Something like a press release about a large protest outside TC, and then another press release by an alleged Comcast Rep stating that he is going to confront the protesters and respond to the criticisms and allegations of the protesters, and that he might very well punch someone in the face.. something completely staged, but with the promise of potential fisticuffs.. but he wouldn't be a real Comcast rep of course. Anyway, that kind of thing, you get the idea.
Honestly, someone should just go up to the highest building in Houston, and threaten to jump off if Comcast doesn't agree with other providers. You don't have to actually jump, but it will for sure be all over the news.
How about just go down the street and raise hell at the studios. bang on the windows when they do something live, act all dumb and stupid. i'd do that. except the possible jail part
So last night El Pigto and I got to go to a party suite before the game for a Q&A with Rockets CEO Tad Brown about the Comcast deal. I took notes the best I could, and this is a summary of what he said. -Yesterday, Comcast had good talks with Directv, Time Warner (which I didn't know still existed in Houston), and SuddenLink. No mention of Dish or U-Verse. -In 2002, Fox Sports was supposed to open a studio like the one Comcast opened in the pavilions. It took 8 years for Fox Sports to finally agree to open the studio, and the reason they offered to was to open up contract extension talks. He said they would rather take less money and go elsewhere than to stay with Fox and be ignored. -They had other offers but chose Comcast because they had a vision on how to expand sports programming and coverage in Houston. They also liked how Comcast Sportsnet was presented and how well it worked in a few other cities. The new channel also created over 150 jobs in Houston. -LA is in the same situation with their new deal with Time Warner, and what they're charging is outrageous. Feel bad for their fans. -Comcast has an affiliate group that makes calls all day to try to negotiate with other carriers. They feel like once they get 1 major carrier to agree, the rest will follow. -Someone said there was a rumor that the carriers would charge customers $4 per month for Comcast Sportsnet, he said to his knowledge that isn't true. They haven't discussed re-transmission numbers. -He said believe it or not, the Rockets have a great relationship with Directv. He and the CEO of Directv in Houston know each other, and he said they were the first ones that wanted to try to get a deal done as soon as the Rockets' Fox deal was over. Directv might be the 1st carrier to agree to terms and it should be soon (days, weeks?) -Rockets knew this was a possibility (fans not being able to watch games), but even their worst case scenario, they didn't think it would drag out like this. -Someone said they live in Kingwood (Tad Brown does as well),and he can't listen to 790 in that part of town. Tad said they are currently working with 740 AM and FM 99.1 on getting Rockets games simulcast all around town so everyone can listen. -El Pigto brought up the Portland situation and Tad said this is way different than the Portland deal. I'm not sure what he meant, but he said Portland gave/sold their rights away when their old deal expired so there's a bunch of confusion and they don't have the exclusive rights to their own broadcasts. He also said Portland is a much smaller market, so some carriers don't feel as pressured to get a deal done as they do in bigger markets. He also said that a lot of people don't know that Paul Allen (owner of the Blazers) had/has a cable company and his own company didn't broadcast Blazers games. It's a mess in Portland. -He also said that when companies get deals done, they get their money from the other carriers, but when the deal ends early (Like the Rockets and Fox) the carriers don't give you a refund of what you paid for, so other companies still made money off of the Fox deal. -After he was done and everyone spread out, I went up to him and asked him, "Honestly, is the hold up because Comcast is asking for too much money, or are other big carriers, as a negotiation tactic, letting y'all (Comcast/Rockets) sweat it out as much as possible in order to get y'all to accept a low ball offer?" He said that's negotiation tactics for everything in life, to try to get the best deal for you. He said they're not asking for much to start off with, and he thinks the initial deals will be 5-8 years per company. After that, they'll try to renew with long term deals so fans don't have to keep going through this. I told him if I owned a rival provider, I'd let y'all take all the heat and criticism from the fans and the media until y'all accepted a low ball offer to carry your channel, and he just kind of nodded his head... -In my opinion (Ricksmith, not Tad) Comcast Sportsnet is a great channel. They already carry Rockets, Astros, Texans post-game coverage, UH, Rice, high school football, and other small college football games. It really is a great channel. Tad said the next thing they're going after is the Dynamo. Sportsnet is going after everything in town, and I couldn't be happier. -And lastly, El pigto asked about the Royce White situation (in private), and Tad said that it's a sensitive subject, but they've been watching tweet by tweet. I asked if they could get him to deactivate his account or ask to stop tweeting personal stuff like that and Tad just laughed and said that would be great, but we can't ask him to get rid of his account. He said Royce is immensely talented and they need him here.
Cool. Thanks for that Ricksmith. Although I don't believe this: I don't know why they thought this would play out any differently. I had always expected to miss 20 or so games due to this crap.
Thanks for typing that up. It was a real pleasure to talk to Tad Brown last night and I'm really happy that he was open to answer questions. He really looked disappointed at the current situation and he said they are putting as much pressure on Comcast as possible. The problem is that the Astros own part of the network and Tad said since they aren't playing games right now, they are not really worried about putting pressure on Comcast for the mean time. I felt that overall Tad was being very honest and I definitely appreciate that he took the time to answer everyone's questions. There was some guy in there that was being really hostile and Tad handled it very well. Overall, I have more faith that a deal will get done soon, although he did seem to emphasize DirectTV, Time Warner and Suddenlink more last night. I hope when those guys go down, Uverse and Dish and all the other smaller companies will follow through as well.
Even though I am now an expert at getting my Rockets off the innertubes, it is getting close to "don't give a damn, I'm switching my cable to Comcast" mode. I've tried holding out. I will wait 2 more weeks. i will simply split my service off from the ATT services I carry. I am not changing e mail accounts again....no way.
Mike Bresnahan @Mike_Bresnahan Source: Time Warner Cable agrees to deal with DirecTV to broadcast Lakers games. Details coming soon.
