Part of me really wants the Comcast carriage deal to be voided and for Comcast to be as difficult negotiating as the other providers were...followed by swathes of Comcast subscribers leaving them for DirectTV and AT&T just like Comcast hoped would happen (and didn't).
Yeah...part of me thinks that would be awesome. The other part of me would just feel bad for the friends I have that have no option other than Comcast.
Yeah. The Comcast carriage agreement has to be part of the deal. If it isn't, then we still only get 40% of households instead of 80%. That would be merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The big advantage of having Direct TV involved is that almost anyone will have the ability to get the games. If anyone has a clear view of the southern sky, they can get Direct TV. With Comcast, people were limited by the infrastructure. If Comcast wasn't available in your area you were screwed and HAD to stream games. If Comcast somehow allowed to get out of their carriage arrangement in the original deal, they could lose a lot of customers to Direct TV and ATT. Here's to hoping the DTV/ATT deal goes through!! The only people who will not be able to get the channel are the ones with tall buildings in the way or the ones who live in apartment complexes that do not allow for satellite installation.
Sorry for the late response, I just saw this. The Astros and Rockets wanted to go straight out the gates with a 3.50 per subscriber rate and wanted Comcast to pay that from Day 1. Comcast was hesitant that the market would bear 3.50 per subscriber and would not initially agree to paying that amount but reluctantly agreed to only if their price got adjusted once someone else paid less than 3.50. If everyone signed on at above 3.50 then Comcast made money off the Network side to offset such high carriage rates on the provider side. The loophole was the possibility that one of their partners could refuse to sign any deal for less than 3.50. Which is exactly what happened. Comcast winds up paying more than market value and is in effect having to support the Network to their own detriment. I don't think that any of us in Comcast's position would have felt they were being treated fairly by their partners having to keep paying that inflated rate. The dick move was either not adjusting or somehow offsetting the unintended impact that the high rates had on Comcast. Living here in Houston, we are all familiar Enron and creative accounting. When you put revenue in buckets, if you are not careful, you can make 1 side of the business look much better than it actually is and another look much worse than it actually is. For Enron, the much better part was way offset with the much worse... As it turned out in this case, based on the current market when the **** hit the fan in this case, too much of the team's revenue was residing in the media rights bucket. If paid, the teams were getting well compensated. The revenue projections for the Network were way off and yes that caused the Network deal to look "rotten". But unlike Enron, the teams would have been making money with both business units had they just restructured the arrangements or had just did as the Rockets did run the Network side in the red (while offsetting it with the media rights). Crane dug in hardline against the providers when it was obvious that they weren't caving and it affected both his partners one (Comcast) more than the other. As I stated before, Crane bottomed out his payroll and was receiving revenue sharing and national TV money to cover his expenses. As I also pointed out and was confirmed by sources within the new buyers, by intentionally fielding a bad team, Crane hurt the value of the product that providers were being asked to pay more than ever for. Ultimately the partners in the Network began thinking of ways to out dick move each other.
Believe it or not, that's quite a few more people than expected... especially people who live within the loop in high-rises, condos, or town-homes. But yes, between DTV and Comcast, that should be enough to cover the vast majority of pay-tv subscribers. Having AT&T involved is the icing on the cake, as it seems that people who have access to AT&T (vs. Comcast or DTV), tend to subscribe to it.
I would point out that this is all total conjecture on your part. None of know the circumstances under which the MFN was negotiated or what Comcast thought was a fair or reasonable price per subscriber. That's not a loophole - the veto right was specifically negotiated by all parties involved, presumably to protect each of their interests and ensure the network didn't move forward unless they all were on the same page. Unless you think Comcast's lawyers are a bunch of morons and didn't foresee a pretty basic and realistic possibility of the teams wanting higher rates than the market was bearing - something that's happening in networks all across the country - then Comcast wasn't duped here. If anything, Comcast should have been extra concerned about all possible outcomes because the Astros were for sale and they knew they would be working with a new, unknown owner. This is not creative accounting. Guaranteed rights fees are the incentive that a provider offers to convince the people with the valuable assets - the media rights - to partner with them. This wasn't some kind of shady set up - the teams took lower guaranteed rights fees in exchange for potential profits. No - they were all doing what was in the best interests of their respective organizations and their investors, which is fairly standard operating procedure.
Mind your own business. I was asked why I thought it was a loophole and I provided a response to the poster who asked the question. There was no need for you to respond in an argumentative tone to a post not directed to you. I'm not going to bother tearing your response apart once again.
I am interested in your thoughts regarding objections that Comcast might have and the best way for the Judge to handle it. I'm speaking of a scenario in which Comcast wants out of this debacle and isn't interested in buying it.
I sincerely hope it ends with wide spread carriage (Comcast, ATT, & Direct) but if it doesn't then I would not be surprised to see Comcast lose a lot of customers to Direct TV and/or ATT. Besides, Direct TV is amazing. I have never had Comcast so I cant say 100% for sure but there are a lot of people who are unhappy with Comcast (not even counting the CSN-Houston fiasco).
I will miss reading through pages of a pissing contest to see if there was any news about the situation Wait, no I won't
