Wish I had seen this in time. I have relatives who are Reds fans and wouldn't mind rubbing a fluke win in their faces.
I have seats in the Crawford Boxes for the 18th, and may not be able to go due to class. Does anyone have good seats to the game on the 17th they'd be willing to trade?
I would like to. I have 3, section 133 row 23 seats 17 18 19. How many do you have in the Crawford boxes?
Starting to think CSN-Houston might just simply go away. They are losing a ton of money, and the largest shareholder isn't barely drawing a few thousand viewers per game. Even a few games had less than a thousand viewers. The Rockets should definitely find a loophole to back out of this deal. This station will not go anywhere.
They had a similar low rating last year going head to head with a Texans game, when the Astros were on a channel that everybody could get. Its not just the channel... its the state of the two teams (Texans/Astros), leagues, and where fan interest is currently in this town.
All true. Now go try to market this channel as being worthwhile when outside of basketball season it's totally worthless. Imagine how excited DirecTV is to get this channel and it's 1000 viewers!
Its all cyclical and dependent on how the team is doing. I remember Sunday pennant race games and playoff games that went head to head with the Texans in 2004 and 2005. Pretty sure most of the city was watching the team competing for the championship. Real test comes when both teams are good. Texans will still likely win that battle, but Houston is big enough to support two successful teams concurrently via viewership and attendance.
If Les can find a way to make that happen my respect for him will multiply be the thousands. I have a feeling that Les is probably fuming over this right about now and is exploring options. At the very least get the games streamed online, or maybe simulcast on something like the KUBE until a deal gets worked out.
If CSN-H does this, CSN-H never gets a deal worked out. Either CSN-H dies or enough people switch to Comcast to make the other providers want to switch. CSN-H may make itself available online to areas not serviced by any provider, but that doesn't affect most people that want it.
Or a third option is that CSN-H recognizes they've overvalued their product and lowers their asking price.
Right now, CSN-H's value is close to zero dollars to the other providers. Houston sports fans don't want CSN-H if it means switching to Comcast. There is no financial incentive for providers to add CSN-H. While it is possible that CSN-H lowers their price a little in negotiations, it can't survive at what it is worth to other providers. I stand by the CSN-H dies or enough people switch to Comcast making providers acquire CSN-H. On a side note, if CSN-H dies, the Rockets will have a hard time getting a good TV deal by themselves as not having them has not caused providers to lose enough customers to give the Rockets value.
Wait - the providers get to sell the ads on the network, right? So there is some value - at least during Rockets season. The question is just how much. It's less than the ridiculous amounts CSN-H is trying to charge but is certainly well above $0.
To clarify, I don't mean that they get all the money from ads, but I assume it's split in some proportion. I know with most channels, there's a mix of national and regional/local ads, and I assume there's some kind of distribution of revenues between the providers and the networks themselves.
