There's to need to worry, CSN and Jim Crane personally are working day and night to get this worked out.
Okay, I want to point something out to all of you guys because I laugh every time you guys post this type of ****. I currently work in IT, but I used to work in the cable industry (No, not Comcast) Stop posting that you heard from a "rep", or an online chat person that CSN is coming to Houston. These people don't know ****, when I worked in that industry, people would say ANYTHING to get you to sign up. Unless you're speaking directly with CORPORATE employees (which certainly aren't taking phone calls, or going to your door) don't believe anything. The sheer incompetence of these employees is absolutely hilarious. There's only a handful of semi-private information these guys know.
You had Time Warner Cable (not the same thing) during 04-07. (Unless you didn't live in Houston, and were in an original Comcast market) Yes, Comcast has definitely improved and a ton of people in Houston have a bad taste in their mouths from the old Time Warner Cable days. I don't use them for TV anymore (I use a VPN to watch Rockets) but their internet in my area is rock solid. 50mb+ with months and months of uptime (no downtime). I use AT&T as my cellular provider but wouldn't touch their TV service with a ten foot pole.
DirecTV is still playing hardball. I'm guessing Charter is something like what Uverse is here in Houston? Link from the Oregonian http://www.oregonlive.com/playbooks...rter_comcast_sportsnet_nort.html#incart_river The Oregonian - Charter, Comcast SportsNet Northwest reach agreement to broadcast Trail Blazers games Allan Brettman, The Oregonian By Allan Brettman, The Oregonian Portland Trail Blazers fans in rural parts of Oregon and Washington that had been howling in frustration in recent years for being excluded from the team's cable-TV broadcast area will find reason to cheer this morning. Comcast SportsNet Northwest, the team's primary broadcast partner, plans to announce that it will be available over Charter Communications for the first time starting Sept. 17 -- just in time for the new NBA season. Charter is the dominant cable-TV provider on much of the Oregon coast and in swaths of southern, central and eastern Oregon, as well as parts of Washington. Fans will have to pay for premium cable packages in those areas to get Comcast SportsNet, and satellite and other cable providers still remain blacked out from the network. Neither Comcast Sportsnet nor Charter officials would discuss details of the agreement in advance of this morning's announcement. Cable partners Since becoming the Trail Blazers' cable television partner starting with the 2007-08 season, Comcast SportsNet Northwest has signed up cable television companies to carry Comcast SportsNet programming. These are current Comcast SportsNet affiliates: Oregon Ashland TV Beaver Creek Telcom Bend Broadband Canby Telcom (launching 9/1) Charter (launching 9/17) Comcast Cable Frontier Communications MiNet Fiber Monroe Telephone Oregon Cable/Reliance Connects Scio Cablevision Wave Broadband Washington Charter (launching 9/17) Comcast Cable Frontier Communications Wave Broadband Nor would they say how many Charter customers are affected, citing competitive reasons. However, they said Charter provides service to 150 communities in Oregon and Washington. A Charter official said rates would not increase as a result of the agreement. Expanded digital basic service starts at $59 a month, a Charter spokesman said. Charter's customer service phone number is 888-438-2427. The Trail Blazers signed a 10-year contract with Comcast SportsNet in 2007 and an immediate sticking point for the new channel was that it wasn't available across many of the cable or satellite providers in the Pacific Northwest -- effectively blacking out Blazer coverage for people in those markets. That pact commenced with the 2007-08 season and ends after the 2016-17 season. Blazers officials have heard often from fans impacted by the blackout, said Blazers president Chris McGowan. An agreement has been "a top priority because it's one our fans ask of us a lot," he said shortly after arriving in last November. The Blazers were not a participant in talks leading to this or any of the Comcast SportsNet agreements with other cable companies. "They drive the ship on that and fortunately they got this done and we're happy," McGowan said. He said he was not surprised it had taken six years for Comcast SportsNet to reach an agreement with one of the state's largest cable companies. "No, not particularly," he said. "These things tend to take a little bit of time and they're complicated." The deal will be announced just two days after the Blazers announced the sale of the naming rights for the building where the team plays its games. The timing was unrelated, McGowan said. "We're thrilled Charter customers will be able to see all of our programming," said Larry Eldridge, Comcast SportsNet general manager. Charter spokesman Jack Hardy said, "It's a culmination of reaching reasonable terms and conditions to bring it to our customers. We're just pleased it happened." The agreement also means Charter subscribers will have access to Comcast SportsNet's other programming, including Oregon and Oregon State pregame and postgame events. Comcast SportsNet will be available on expanded basic digital service on channel 427 and in HD on channel 827. But two key satellite companies in the region -- Direct TV and Dish Network --remain out of the Comcast SportsNet network fold, meaning many customers still won't have an option to see games."We are continually tying to have that dialogue with both providers," Eldridge said. "It's unlikely we would come to an agreement any time soon," DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said, declining to comment further. A representative for Dish Network couldn't be reached Wednesday. Comcast SportsNet Northwest is one of 13 regional networks that are part of NBC Sports Regional Networks, all of which are under the umbrella of NBC Sports Group, a division of NBC Universal. Today's news follows the announcement July 31 that the team renewed its broadcast television agreement with KGW NewsChannel 8 for the next three seasons, through the 2015-16. KGW is allowed to broadcast at least 16 regular season games from the upcoming 2013-14 schedule. Comcast broadcasts 60. National networks also broadcast some of the Blazers' 82 regular season games.
I have heard the commercials where certain cable providers claim they can help get you out of you're current cable contract, I have about a yr left with direct tv and theres no way im missing the Rockets this year again but I also prefer not to pay $200 to cancel the service... anybody know any tricks to avoid this?
If this can happen there then why not make the same deal here. I have sudden link, which was charter. That would be fantastic!
Comcast is simply wrong here. Or, more to the point, the cable industry has failed to get the hint from Netflix and their own On-Demand offerings that people would much rather pick and choose what they want to pay for and watch. Comcast, please *PLEASE* give up on your "must carry" strategy. It is *soooo* Y2k. I do not care whether you force cable and satellite operators force this content on subscribers in Arkansas. I *do* care that your ackbasswords business plan affects our fan community. Let me and every other fan decide whether to subscribe to this content or not. As an aside, I am otherwise a reasonably happy Comcast customer. Aside from the horrendous telephone wait times (1.5 hours?!? Really?!?!), that is... Availability has been excellent, broadcast quality good, no issues with voice, etc.
The Satellite companies (and all the networks) are just as guilty for perpetuating the "bundling" strategy as comcast is. They all love it. They all benefit from it. They all make more $$$ from the subscribers from it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-...houston-and-indianapolis-2013-3#ixzz2OxMBawN7 On average about 20200 household watched rockets games last year. Lets go ahead and tripe that for this year so that is 60000 households (which is unlikely). There are 2.1 million tv households in Houston. Suppose 80% of houston has cable and satellite. Now Comcast wants $3.50 for those 80% of subscribers for Comcast. To get the same cash out of the 60k households they would need: 2100*.8/60*3.50 or 98 dollars per month per household. However suppose 300k households actually care about the rockets. They would still need to pay $20/month for the rockets.
Why should Comcast bend over when the majority on NBA/MLB teams do not play on a special sports tier or a la carte? The Astros need the money more than Comcast does and that's what's holding this back.
Because: 1. The only regional networks charging $3.50 like CSN are serving huge markets like the NY area... way out of Houston's league. CSN isn't a true regional sports network. It only covers Houston. It doesn't serve an entire region. 2. Other regional networks cover teams that an entire area follows. CSN wants their channel, which only carries the Rockets and Astros, to span across 5 states. You think those two teams are popular enough in 5 states? In the view of Dish and DirecTV, why should folks in Arkansas be charged for a channel that shows Rockets and Astros games... two teams that most people in Arkansas don't care about. So Dish, DirecTV, etc. asked CSN to lower their price because it is way too expensive. CSN said no. So the satellite and cable companies said decrease the area that you want CSN distributed to because it isn't fair to folks in other states like Arkansas to be forced to pay for a Houston station. CSN said no. Satellite and cable companies said well we would offer it a la carte so that those who want it can get it. CSN said no. CSN is asking for waaaaay too much for their channel. I don't blame the cable and satellite companies one bit.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business...is-a-huge-rip-off-so-how-do-we-fix-it/265814/ If You Don't Watch Sports, TV Is a Huge Rip-Off (So, How Do We Fix It?) DEREK THOMPSONDEC 3 2012, 6:43 PM ET Are sports on TV a good deal? Depends. If you watch sports, millions of pay-TV households who never click on their ESPN channels are subsidizing your habit. If you don't watch sports, you're one of the suckers paying an extra $100 a year for a product you don't consume. Out-of-control sports TV costs are receiving a lot of attention these days, and much of the press coverage is misleading, miscalculated, or just plain wrong. Let's divide fact from fiction. A shocking share of your monthly cable bill goes to sports programming. TRUE. Here's how your cable bill works. You pay $80-ish each month for cable (just talking TV here, not Internet, which is often included in the bill). About $30 are the programming costs -- the wholesale price of all the channels. ESPN gets about $5 per household per month. MTV gets about $0.39. Half of your cable-TV bill pays for sports channels. FALSE. Somehow, this stat, or something like it, made its way into headlines and ledes at the Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer and Mother Jones and beyond. It's not true. Your pay-TV bill is $80. Programming costs are $30. Sports programming costs (all of the sports networks combined) are $12, or more if you live in Southern California, as the graph above from the LA Times shows. Twelve dollars divided by $80 isn't 50% of your bill. It's 15%. How did the newspapers get it wrong? First, they mistook programming costs for the entire cable bill. Big mistake. Second, they relied on analysis by Craig Moffett, who in September calculated that if you include the high costs of sports rights from TNT, USA, NBC, CBS, and ABC, it's clear that "sports easily accounts for more than half of the cost of a Pay TV subscription." But those are networks that practically every pay-TV customer watches, whether or not he/she likes sports. You could say that TNT "Law and Order" fans are subsidizing TNT basketball fans. But it's also the case that TNT basketball fans are keeping the lights on for TNT original dramas. In short: Channels are bundles, too. It's all cable's fault. FALSE. When we get mad at the price of a cable bill, we tend to blame the company name at the top of the bill. It's not that simple. Cable companies make deals to carry channels. Channels make deals to carry sports. Big sports leagues, understanding their unique position in a fragmented media market to be a major audience driver, force channels to pay through the nose for new contracts. Here are two examples. In September ESPN agreed to pay the NFL 70% more per game to carry Monday Night Football through 2021. Last week, the LA Times reported a possible deal between the Dodgers and Fox that would be worth 20-times more -- twenty! -- than the current contract. Expensive new contracts means higher costs for channels, who pass the costs to the cable providers, who pass the costs to you. That's why deals like these make sports programming a leading source of your steadily rising cable bill, whether or not you watch sports. Television's bundling model allows runaway price inflation in sports. TRUE. If you pay for cable and hate sports, then ... well, gosh, I'm just really sorry. Actually a better word would be grateful. You're subsidizing my ESPN addiction. Thanks. Seriously, though, you have the worst of two worlds. Channels competing over sports rights bid up the price of programming. The bundle pricing model means you have no choice but to pay what amounts to a mandatory sports tax. Media companies' all-or-nothing deal with cable providers means you have no choice but to pay at least $100 per year for sports you don't plan to watch. Some awesome tech company will come along and fix everything. FALSE. Hopefully you see at this point why there is little that Google, or Apple, or Microsoft, or whoever, can do to make watching TV much cheaper. Google can't force ESPN to pay less for the NFL, or force Fox to pay less for the Dodgers. If tried to compete nation-wide with Comcast and Time Warner Cable, it would stuck with the same programming cost inflation crisis that scares TWC ... plus! It would have to spend an extra $200 billion to build a nationwide infrastructure to move live video. The evolution of TV is probably going to be much more boring. Maybe DISH will decide it won't pay the high costs that ESPN and regional sports networks demand and will become synonymous will "cable for people who hate sports." That way, households in an area served by DISH and Comcast can choose between sports and not-sports, and if more people choose not-sports, then sports networks will necessarily slow their inflation rate to keep from upsetting sports fans who suddenly get stuck with a higher bill. For now, maybe nothing changes. Time Warner Cable has offered cable packages without ESPN and other expensive sports networks to subscribers in the New York area. According to their press office, most of the people who started with cable-lite eventually upgraded to the full cable package, egregious sports programming and all. The only thing we love more than complaining about the cable bundle is ... the cable bundle.
That's not entirely true. Somewhere buried in this thread shows that Pittsburgh gets more that what CSN is asking. I believe the same with DC. I've been searching google trying to find some exact numbers but haven't yet. You are also forgetting the teams are part owners and need a piece of the pie. I'm sure if it was just a Comcast deal the asking price would be much lower. The Astros want those regions because they can do so. The Rockets can't so that's not the issue with them.
The Astros and Rockets own what... 77%? What is 77% of nothing? And as far as the Astros wanting those regions... the cable and satellite companies have researched it and come to the conclusion that there is nowhere near enough demand to justify raising people's bills in areas outside of the Houston area.
Comcast is going to hold out for the best possible deal. They're a big enough company to withstand any short term loss. The teams are making less than they could have... But with the rights fees they are getting, they are still making more than they were under their previous contract with FSN.
