Well, 4 games to go. Glad that I have been a past season ticket holder, loyal watcher since the late 80's and I got to see 4 games this year on television. Thanks, Rox/Stros/Crapcast Glad you were thankful for that public money you received to build your nice new downtown stadiums Ready for the playoffs and hoping I get to actually watch my hometown team more times than I get to watch the Knicks next season
Actually, lurching out and blaming either side in a multi-million dollar dispute between enormous business conglomerates -- especially when you have as few confirmed facts as we do -- is how ignorant dumb-asses behave.
I'm not gonna get personal with it...but I do agree with the concept behind The Cat's last take. I hear people echoing concerns over greed in this thread. Of course there's greed. It's on ALL sides. It's inherent in an economic system where the first duty of the officers/directors of a corporate entity is to maximize profits for their shareholders. We can argue all day over whether that's a good thing...but that's a macro argument. This is a micro case study. These are negotiations between very sophisticated parties. There's not a lot of right/wrong morality in this. It's just trying to get a deal that people can live with. As a consumer, I totally have a choice here. I opted to sign longer with Uverse and get a discount as opposed to paying for Comcast...I could have opted to ditch Uverse and sign up with Comcast. Then I could watch CSNHouston. This idea of "blame" for negotiations among huge corporations is silly to me...particularly when you're arguing NBC/Comcast v. the various providers. I get the argument more with respect to the Astros and Rockets...but I'm still not convinced either one of them is the "most informed" party in those negotiations on behalf of their side. I think that's why they partner with a group like Comcast...because those guys have experience in other markets negotiating these things out. It's why Crane reports about negotiations that he wasn't present in and that he's still waiting to get a report from a couple of weeks back. The Rockets and Astros are players in this particular battle....but there's a larger war at stake here between Comcast/NBC and these providers that's playing out in other markets around the country.
You refuse to accept the fact that consumers will have to pay more to have CSN. The providers are trying to keep from losing customers as they're forced to raise prices. This action on their part, intentionally or not, protects me as a consumer because it keeps my bill down. How are the Astros and Rockets protecting me as a consumer? All they want is more of my money. I'm not interested in participating in the sports dollars race where every franchise has to continue to extort money from their fans in order to "compete" so that players can make more money, agents can make more money, networks can make more money, and owners can make more money. I don't give a damn if New York wants to pay more and LA wants to pay more and Chicago wants to pay more. I don't want to pay any more. What will happen if the providers give in to a deal with CSN is that some day in the not too distant future we'll have a percentage increase of our bill and it'll come and go without nary a word from anyone in the press. I'm sick of it honestly. I'm sick of paying $65 for a decent seat, $7 for a coke, $10 for parking. Maybe I'm getting old or something but the cost/reward ratio on sports teams is not worth my money any longer. It's become an endless cycle of greed.
Huh? When did I ever not acknowledge or accept that bills would be higher if/when they add CSN? That's common sense and can be said any time any channel is launched or an existing channel renegotiates to a higher figure. Yes, the bill will be higher. I get that. What you're seemingly not acknowledging is that the CSN side didn't pull the number they're searching for out of thin air or sheer greed. It's based on precedents set and agreed to by providers in comparable markets -- i.e. places like Dallas, not NY/LA/Chicago. The biggest priority for me in all this (and I know this isn't true for everyone, but since you explained your side, I'll explain mine) is to have the Astros and Rockets able to compete for championships. If they don't get similar revenues to rival teams in comparable markets, they're not going to be able to. You want to protect the consumer, DirecTV? Then don't agree to the massive new FSSW deal with the Rangers. You don't want to make customers pay for a channel that not all will derive value from? OK, let me pay a lower monthly rate once you wipe HGTV, Oxygen, Lifetime, etc. off my bill. The providers aren't that worried about the consumer and losing customers. If they were, they'd have fought a hell of a lot harder in non-Houston negotiations. Instead, they caved without much of a fight and gave the Rangers/Mavs whatever they asked for. The difference here? CSN Houston is more vulnerable. It's a standalone startup. It's not bundled with any other networks, so it's more convenient for the providers to make this the front line for their "war". To me, it's not a very principled or important stand if you're only willing to do it when it's especially convenient.
Do you have any data to back this up? Can you demonstrate that the Rockets/Astros do as well on television as the Mavericks/Rangers? As far as taking sides, if it was Fox Sports on the other side, the blame might be harder to place. That it is NBC/Comcast makes it much easier considering they have a history of being dirty players and overly greedy. Edit: Since I'm nice, I looked it up for you: http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121004&content_id=39490706&vkey=pr_tex&c_id=tex In 2012, the Rangers had an average of 151,200 viewers on Fox Sports. http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2012/10/01/Media/MLB-RSNs.aspx In 2012, the Astros had an average of 22,000 viewers. What type of media deal did the Padres, As, Marlins and Royals sign? Before you say fluke! they were down 32% last year. So the year before they were around 30,000 viewers on average. Edit 2: Between the Rockets and Astros, fewer people would be watching a combined game (combine both average viewership numbers) than the average Rangers game alone!
No, I don't have the hard data because CSN won't show me, just as the providers won't show data for why they believe the asking price is unreasonable. But if folks in this thread are going to puppet the provider talking points without data, I think it's only fair to mention Crane's stated Dallas comparison. (For the record, this is my main beef with both sides: we're at a point now where they need to make their negotiating points public.) As for your latter point, my suspicion is that it has more to do with the NBC/Comcast networks in question often being startups and/or standalones. The Fox Sports networks were generally formed before the explosion in RSN costs and are bundled in a package deal with other properties, thus making it harder (but not impossible) for the provider to negotiate. It's a lot more convenient for providers to fight with standalones and/or startups, so you're more likely to have disputes. That seems a lot more likely to me than NBC/Comcast just generally being "more greedy" than Fox Sports. They each want every penny they can obtain.
These deals are often for 15 or 20 years, so using two years worth of data seems quite disingenuous. Do you have numbers from 2005, when the Astros were a World Series team and the Rangers a laughingstock? Those would need to be factored in as well, considering you're talking about a long-term arrangement that will likely include both up and down cycles for a team.
I think we need to put down our arguments and let the crowds riot. They are sure that Frankenstein is in the castle and no amount of logic will convince them otherwise.
For what it's worth I got another $30 off my Direct TV bill each month today. That's $50in total discounts per month over the past week just by calling and crying like a baby. Today I called to cancel Sunday Ticket as it is on auto-renew. Dude asked me why so I told him my sad story and said he'd do this to ease the pain. They are making it harder and harder for me to switch (which is the point). Since I can't watch the Astros/Rockets I might as well get a lower bill out of it. Was kind of bummed about not being able to watch the Astros and then remembered they were the Astros.
I'm the only one providing any data at all here. I think it's unlikely that they had ratings 10 times better in any given year. Even when they had improvement, it wouldn't be that dramatic. Houston has never been a highly ranked media market for sports in terms of viewership.
10 times greater? For starters, even 7 times better than 2012 would surpass that of Dallas. 5 times from 2011. And I obviously don't know, but those figures don't seem unrealistic when the difference is a contending team loaded with stars versus two of the worst teams in baseball history with no-names. The reason I'm calling you out for the lack of data is that you're the one rushing to judgment. Personally, I think it's quite silly to blame either side given that we have about 1% of the numbers that comprise the value. We need more information and hopefully the meeting will provide that. I just think that if you're going to make a judgment over the likely ratings for a 15-20 year span, you should have both the high and low points from the previous era -- not just the lowest of the low.
Ordinarily, I would be inclined to agree with you. However, the appearance is that there isn't really a lot of negotiating going on. Remember how Crane said that they "wouldn't blink" from the asking price? Simply saying that we are going to get our price come hell or high water isn't exactly a good faith negotiation. If you are going to negotiate, you have to be willing to give up at least a little of what you want in order to bridge an impasse. That is, reportedly, not what is happening.
But you are telling the providers to ASSUME the Astros will have another decade long streak of success like mid 90's-mid 2000's. Not sure why they would assume that, when making that assumption means hundreds of millions
To extend this logic, then, providers should always assume the lowest of the low, since obviously the highs can't be "guaranteed". And yet again, that's a standard they didn't use in other cities.
f' all these suits. what we need to do is find a way to produce the most crystal clear streams and distribute them among us. I'm watching the warriors v lakers on the same site where links for the rockets are available and they look perfectly clear.
I wouldn't put a lot of stock in what they say publicly about negotiations. It's posturing. The CSN side of this negotiation is posturing like crazy through the press.
