This isn't about operating income for them though. They could potentially do serious damage to their long term value if a season with minimal carriage causes them to lose footprint to the Rangers throughout the Southwest/Southeast. They are going to look like a B team. In a city of 2,215,650 tv households, only 20 thousand watch the Rockets. Think about that. Not even 1% of the television in Houston are watching the Rockets. You'd have to talk to nearly 100 people before you found 1 that saw a Rockets game last night. It's pathetic.
pretty sure they didn't forget about that...but you're right that it's another reason to get this resolved sooner rather than later.
Sounds like he's actually looking forward to Astros fans not being able to watch games because it increases his leverage (or so he thinks). What a douche. Maybe because Fox isn't trying to extort money from the providers and using the fans as pawns?
Because I'm sure the other providers weren't hoping for anything that could help their leverage! Yup, CSH is the only network in history to have a dispute with providers that have caused subscribers to miss events or shows they want to watch. Fox Sports would let DTV and Dish show their channel in exchange for a nice smile and a pat on the back if that's what the fans wanted.
Maybe if FSN didn't treat Houston teams like they were JV teams for DFW sports, the Astros and Rockets wouldn't have been looking to leave in the first place.
If I were the Astros or Rockets I would offer deals for fans not able to see their teams. Say for example, if you show a current bill that shows you subscribe to a carrier that does not carry CSN, you get some sort of discount on tickets. I know it's also self serving for the teams to get fans to their games but the teams need to reach out to their fans other than commercials where CSN corralled some fans to say "I want my CSN". Let the fans who you've shortchanged in this deal know that you still want them to be fans of your team.
No...Fox Sports wouldn't ask for a $3.40 subscriber fee ($0.52 above the median for RSN fees), which seems to be the sticking point for these negotiations - or lack there of. Because of the $3.40 subscriber fee. From what I've gathered by all this (and getting hard facts seems more difficult than it should be because of the ongoing negotiations) is that the providers don't want to pay the $3.40 subscriber fee because it's much higher than what other regional sports networks are charging for the same type of coverage. Hence my "extorting the providers" comment. CSN isn't budging at all on the fee and has no plans to. Instead, they are trying to put pressure on the providers to just accept it by using the fans who subscribe to their services against them ("I want my CSN" campaign). Like many others have said in this thread, if we were talking about one holdout provider, I would be more willing to side with CSN, especially if that holdout was MY provider. But this is involving all the major providers (besides Comcast....) and that's why I'm inclined to side with the providers on this issue and not CSN Houston.
Why don't Uverese and Direct TV just offer CSN to their subscribers for whatever the CSN charges are and add it to their bill? Give the users the chance to choose and determine if the product is worth it individually? (like we should be able to a la carte' any and all stations)
Again, the 3.40 demand has not been confirmed by anyone. Just like everyone thinks this is the Astros fault now because of one article....the 3.40 number was mentioned once and everyone has run with it. Why doesn't the U-Verse guy say "they are asking $3.40 which we will not pay" instead of lying about the channel's content? It couldn't be because he wants leverage for his business, could it? Nah, only Comcast works that way.
it would be nice if commissar stern stepped in and didn't allow blackouts in any city with the purchase of nba league pass. I'm cheering for the rockets to make the playoffs, not because this team needs to be battle tested but because we need to watch more than 3 games on tv. when they sweep us from the first round, that will be 4 games + the 3 from espen =) 7 games total..yay!
You would think that these companies who care so much for their customers and would take a bullet for them I've been told, would look into this. But, they're probably just saving the customers from themselves.
Because CSN would never allow that option to be presented. CSN wants total carriage. They want to be paid per subscriber to DirecTV, not per subscriber that then chooses to subscribe to CSN. DTV and all other carriers would of course love the ability to just offer the channel to all customers at $5 a month. However, CSN would lose a ton of money on that deal as there would be nowhere close to the same number of people that would pay for it as they'd get with a per all subscriber fee. Despite RocketMan95's "snarkiness" he apparently knows nothing at all about how these things work.
There's truth here. The coverage of the Rockets/Astros on FSN was terrible. Houston was absolutely treated like the step-child in that arrangement...they needed to do something about that. I don't blame the teams for partnering up and seeking to maximize profits. That's what I expect of them. I'm just disappointed it's taken so long.
I may be remembering wrong, but I think they've offered to put it into the sports pack and CSN would get money for each person that has the sports pack, but they wouldn't agree to that. They want a fee for every subscriber regardless of if they watch the channel.
Exactly. To be fair to them, this is not uncommon to want. What makes this negotiation hard is that they want BOTH a fee for all regardless of whether they watch/want the channel AND they want a higher than average fee.
