While I would definitely want for it to be on the basic tier, I just like the fact that DIRECTV seems to be the only provider active in negotiations with CSN. At this point it'd be nice if they made it available now at a price meanwhile negotiating in the background for a long term deal on the basic tier.
With the Astros being as bad as they are I don't see Crane rushing to make a deal. This could take years.
It depends on the cost to the customer, especially customers who are not really interested in this sort of sports related programming. While people who are die-hard fans of the Rockets and Astros are aghast at this whole debacle, the cable companies must give full consideration to their customers who are not fans of these teams, or who are not interested in them sufficiently to want to pay more for their cable TV to see them. In fact, the insistence by the Rockets and Astros that everyone be forced to pay more whether they give a s**t about the Rockets or Astros or not, is at the core of the problem here. Fans of these teams may not want to pay more for the teams on a special sports tier, but in fact if they get their way, everyone will have to pay more across the board. Make no mistake about it, there is no option on the table that will not result in Rockets/Astros fans paying more to see these teams on television. The only open question is whether everyone else will be forced to pay more too.
yah honestly the more I have thought about this...it does make sense. They are actually asking for the same basic deal as what Fox Southwest gets. They channel is irrelevant now to our market. They should get it. And I prefer them get the deal done like that where it is on basic or expanded. because I am going to be a rockets fan for life and if they settle for fee for the channel of 5 dollars a month that is 60 dollars and 600 for ten years. 120 dollars for a year if it is 10 per month and 1200 over ten years. Long term its better for us to get it added like FSN is. Shoot at this point I am content waiting until next season. I dont really care if I miss the astros ha. The basketball season is almost over.
This is a pretty simple issue when you boil it down: On CSN's side - they created a new sports network in the face of oncoming internet-based streaming of entertainment, and the looming 'death' of major cable services such as Comcast and DirecTV (in their current forms of 'we broadcast it when we want, you watch it when we broadcast it or else record it on your end, and then watch it at your leisure'). The fact is, the model is inevitably changing to an 'on-demand' reality, where the customer will lose patience with that sort of inconvenient restriction, and will simply want to be able to watch whatever they want, whenever they want, just by choosing from available options at any given time. And that's the big problem for everyone. That model doesn't really generate a lot of income the way a captive audience model does. So then we come along with today's situation, and this new CSN Houston channel. The CSN partnership (between Comcast, NBC and the teams themselves) makes this channel, invests who-knows-how-much money in it, and the ONLY way it will be viable - in other words, the ONLY acceptable outcome is to be making back a certain pre-determined amount of money in return for their investments - is for the channel to generate that much income. And by their calculations, based on the population of the area, importantly including the 5-state region for baseball, is for the major carriers to be carrying those channels ON THE BASIC TIER, meaning, of course, that CSN Houston receives the $3.40 (or whatever amount) for EVERY SINGLE SUBSCRIBER, regardless of whether or not the subscriber has any interest in the channel. This is why 'a-la-carte' is not an acceptable solution for them, because, the fact is, while there are a lot of people who want the channel, and who would even be willing to pay extra with a-la-carte, it is a relatively small percentage of customers versus the total number, and the income to CSN for the channel would be nowhere NEAR what they have determined they require for their station to be viable. So they reject out of hand any suggestion of a-la-carte. In other words, those who have ascribed 'greed' to CSN over this issue are absolutely correct. Because they presume - with an air of arrogance and entitlement - that they should receive their high fee for every single subscriber, regardless of the percentage of subscribers percentage of actual interest in the channel. The problem then is this - on the providers' sides (ATT, Dish, DTV, etc) they are faced with a no-win scenario: on the one hand, they have an arbitrary new fee they become obligated to pay to CSN for every subscriber, somewhere on the average of about 2-3% right off the top. This cuts directly into their profit margins, and they are answerable to their shareholders after all. Their choice then becomes 1) eat the cost, or 2) pass the costs along to the customers. For choice 1) eat the cost, why would they do this? What benefits do they receive in return? Customer retention? Maybe, but they have to measure potential customers lost to Comcast versus those who will stay anyway because they just don't care about baseball or basketball. We don't know what this percentage is, but obviously to this point, the choice has been clear for them - no deal. (When the providers inelegantly state that CSN offers 'no new benefits', what they mean is, they offer no new benefits to our SHAREHOLDERS, not our customers. Remember, the customers are the least important in all of this crap) For choice 2) pass the cost along to the customers, this means that every single customer receives a rate increase of 2-3% on average. Now I don't know about you, but I don't like my bill going up, and if it does, I call to get an explanation or complain, etc. Now multiply this times the number of people who will be screaming at them about their bill going up for something they don't even want. This is why the providers are more than willing to take on CSN on a higher tier (which allows customers to choose the service, but which would VASTLY reduce CSN's income - CSN is spewing pure unfiltered BULL***** when they complain that it's not fair to customers and limits their access by doing that, other markets don't have their home teams on higher tiers, etc etc.. all pure bull*****. What they really mean is, HEY! WE WANT THE FEE FOR *EVERY* CUSTOMER! NOT JUST THE ONES WHO WANT TO SEE US! THAT'S NOT FAIR!). Now ideally, the providers would simply dump Fox Sports and replace it with CSN for an equal cost to what Fox was charging, so it then becomes a wash for customers and the providers can simply add the channel and everyone is happy. The real issue then is that a) we don't know if the providers can actually DO that - ie what are the remaining contractual obligations to Fox, and at what cost, and for how much longer? And B) what is the monetary difference per basic-tier subscriber between what the providers were paying Fox and what CSN is demanding? This is the information which has been kept carefully hidden by all parties involved. CSN claims to be in 'negotiations' with the providers, but 'negotiations' which do not involve any willingness to change anything *AT ALL* from their initial demands - well, that is not 'negotiating', that is just sitting there throwing a tantrum, screaming and then holding your breath until you turn blue. So all of us are caught in the middle. Until things change, this will not be resolved. What needs to change? 1) The contractual obligation to Fox Sports in this region needs to go away, and those dollars paid to Fox need to be made available to CSN. 2) The dollar amount paid for Fox Sports (which, I apologize, but I don't know how much it is) is almost assuredly lower than the amount being demanded by CSN, therefore, first things first, the EXACT AMOUNT OF THE DIFFERENCE between what they providers are already paying for FSSW and CSN's egregiously high asking price needs to be made known publicly. 3) The sides then need to actually seriously NEGOTIATE A DEAL. CSN MUST be willing to come down from their demanded price, and the providers MUST be willing to pay perhaps at least a little extra and keep the channel on the basic tier (and be willing to either pass the costs along or eat them). When those things happen, we will all get the channel. Sadly, the reality is that this is nothing new, either to us, or more importantly, to the sides involved. The fact that this HASN'T happened yet is not a good sign. This means that at least one (or likely more than one, but at least one) of the items above is holding the deal up. Which one? We don't know yet. Possibly the obligations to Fox are just too ironclad and the Providers can't escape it. If so, then there is no point in even wasting breath on all this until that is resolved. However, if it is one of the others - ie the possibility that CSN is demanding double or even triple what was being paid for Fox (possibly ON TOP of what is STILL being paid to Fox), then it's what most people have assumed all along - the price is too high. Or maybe it's just that the providers are possibly willing to add the channel, even on the basic tier for everyone, but simply not at the super-premium price tag that CSN is demanding, and CSN's flat refusal to budge from their initial demands, then that could be the holdup. The appalling this is, this could have all been avoided. This situation makes the Rockets and Astros look miserably stupid, arrogant and frankly incompetent. The fact that they got themselves involved in this situation with CSN without apparently being aware of the issues with the providers, as well as the questionable decision to become inextricably intertwined with a less-than-ethical company in Comcast to begin with, it just shows their bald greed for what it is. The fact that they invested so much money and then just ASSUMED the providers would pay whatever they demanded, it makes them appear greedy and stupid. Even worse, none of them seem to understand that this is 2013, and while they all sit and argue amongst themselves, those 'unimportant people' - the customers - are not just sitting idly by. We are not just going to meekly 'take it'. Every day, more and more customers are taking matters into their own hands and abandoning the traditional structure of entertainment-delivery and embracing the on-demand model, including watching our sports teams. FOR FREE. The quality has now reached the point that it is at least watchable and enjoyable enough, just using things like the new streaming capabilities, and the quality and capabilities are only going to improve with every passing day. Are you paying any attention at all, Crane? Alexander? Can you stop making insulting commercials long enough to open your eyes, Hutchings, you NITWIT? You are in a suicidal death struggle with the providers, you caused this, and now WE, the unimportant BOVINES you thought you were going to MILK, WE ARE WATCHING YOUR CHANNEL FOR FREE. We don't have to switch to Comcast, and we don't have to call and berate our providers to help you bully them into soaking all of us for more money. This is what happens to stupid greedy people: they lose. At this point, speaking personally, I am shifting my focus to trying to find ways to simply duplicate what I could do before. We can now watch the Rockets (and presumably the Lastros, if anyone actually wants to do that) in a HD-quality stream, and it should only get better over time. The next thing is to get something set up to where I can DVR-it on the computer, and then get it hooked to the big TV, and then ultimately be able to schedule recordings, etc, just like before. It will happen eventually. And the happy fact that not one DIME is going to Comcast or Les or Crane in the process, well that's just icing on the cake. Sorry for the TLDR rant..
Nero, Good post. The one thing that should be clarified is that CSN is owned by the Rockets and Astros, so it is not as if these teams are innocent bystanders here, watching in horror as CSN fails to get this resolved. If the Rockets and Astros wanted to reconfigure their deal with CSN (which they own) so as to make this palatable to the cable providers, they could easily do that whenever they wanted to. Clearly, they do not want to, which is on them. It is the Rockets and Astros who have created this current situation and who are responsible for this mess.
I think the core of the problem now lies in this. The operators would ideally like to move FSSW to a higher tier and replace it with CSN Houston thus offsetting the costs they will incur and making their customers happy by getting CSN Houston. Unfortunately, the operators are already locked into long term contracts with FSSW. Now they could just bite the bullet in the short term on the money and bump FSSW to the higher tier once that contract comes around again. But, the big problem lies in that FSSW is tied to many of the other Fox channels like FX as a bigger contract and Fox won't let FSSW get bumped to a higher tier in Houston.
As an alum of a former Mtn West school (TCU), I went through this before with the now defunct MWC Network. It was owned by Comcast. It launched in Sept 2006. It was picked up by Comcast in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. It was finally picked up by DirecTV in 2008 on their basic tier in those states plus DFW, San Diego, & Las Vegas (homes of MWC teams) and on a sports tier everywhere else. Needless to say, it sucked in 2006 and 2007 when a TCU football game was on the mtn as no one in Texas could see it.
I just called Uverse and told them I was thinking of cancelling. At first they offered me $10 off per month, but with that I wouldn't have to be locked into a contract. Then she said if I agreed to a 1 year contract, they would give me $40 off per month of my programming, plus a free receiver for a year. That's a total savings of $47/month for the next year. I went ahead and took it.
I can't believe Rockets management allowed this to happen. I'm just disgusted and fed up with the entire situation. I'll watch the playoffs on TNT, but feel robbed of all the games I missed. This is about as low as it gets when it comes to screwing fans over. Especially in the home city of the team in question. I don't see how it came to this, but being blacked out, even from NBA TV and League Pass is just ****ing dirty.
Unless it's on NBATV then it will probably be blacked out in Houston. Let's just hope all of the Rockets playoff games are on TNT or ESPN!
This is regulated by the NBA. Even if we were still on FSN , any NBATV game would be blacked out regardless. If you have DIRECTV (must have internet connected receiver) and an Android device, I've made several posts on how to get around the NBATV blackout's.
The amount of people watching the Rockets games during the playoffs could be a difference maker. PLEASE WATCH
Are they going to black out TNT/ESPN games played in Houston?! Someone was trying to tell me this earlier...
I have Comcast and will be switching to another provider right after the last regular season Rockets game (Lakers). Just to be sure, I should be fine during playoffs right (Unless NBA TV like above poster mentioned)? Thanks
