Sounds impossible, but it would be better to keep CSN and broadcast to everyone. The channel is freakin awesome. All the local sports basically 24/7. Hate to see it go.
The network would need to charge a certain rate to continue to pay all the employees, pay the team's rights fees, and still hope to turn a profit. Now, you could consider a decrease in the team's rights fees to off-set some of the costs (presuming the teams agree to this)... but you can't just write off all the debt that currently exists (including the unpaid rights fees) without some sort of repercussions. There's a good chance they were going to have to scale back production/employees even if they were sticking around... it was a gold-plated channel that basically ran out of money.
This ignores the fact that the one offer that came in was the result of extensive serious, reasonable negotiations. People act like this is something exclusive to CSN-H, while ignoring the fact that it's happening all over the country. The Dodgers have missed an entire season on TV. Portland has had this going on for years. The reality is that all of these stations are simply mis-priced. CSN-H tried to do too much and had a cost structure that didn't match the demand. Taking less revenues wasn't viable; getting more revenues was impossible. Thus, it was doomed to failure. DTV is going to be getting the $3.40 or whatever from Comcast - so they are getting the revenues that CSN-H couldn't get. And they will be paying the Astros and Rockets less in media fees. So they are getting a great deal and still have determined that all this high-end secondary programming isn't worth it. The math simply doesn't work and the ratings don't justify it. This idea that this is ruining the lives of innocent people is nonsense. These people joined a company that had no funding and no viable business model. As a result, they got opportunities they wouldn't have had otherwise for 2 years while the company bled money. Many will get great opportunities with other networks. They lived the reality of joining a startup company. It happens to people all the time - the jobs exist because the company is taking a risk. If the risk fails, the company goes. It's not the owners' job to accept losses or sustain a crappy company just to provide jobs.
There were many documented "negotiating sessions". They mostly ended without offers because both sides implicitly understood they were on completely different playing fields and there was no acceptable middle ground under the model that CSNH was founded under. Major's post hits the nail on the head, on all fronts.
Seems a $5-$10 increase per "new" customer (non-Comcast people) would more than pay for the product. Just think of how much money they lost by less than 25% of the city actually viewing. They would also make more money from advertising with increased viewership, wouldn't they?
I know there were many 'negotiating sessions' - Crane said it dozens of times. However, if CSNH never budged at all from their original demanded price, then in my mind that does not qualify as 'serious'. It is in fact the opposite of serious. Basically this is why the only thing I really want to know after the corpse of this thing is dead and buried is: what were the facts? We as fans and taxpayers deserve to know.
Not sure you could base that decision on "ratings"... especially when you're talking about a channel that was getting 0.0 ratings for actual games. Basically it comes down to how much "profit" the new owner of the channel desires to have, and how much they'd be willing to cut into that profit in the name of ancillary programming that would increase the overall "quality" of the channel. Ancillary programming does not bring in ratings (compared to the games themselves) even on successful channels... and they certainly don't draw extra advertising to the network. They're not going to pay for the extra programming/talent because they don't want to... and they don't care if it decreases the quality of the product.
Count me in this group. It's possible the quality of CSN content could have won me over. Probably not.
This is an inaccurate view of how these channeled are valued. Part of how csn was hoping to market value to the providers was the idea that this channel would have demand beyond just the games. Additionally, local air time would be valuable in ad revenue if the ratings justify it.
Sure. Just saying that using ratings for the current channel would be incredibly stupid. They didn't have demand for even the games itself, so of course there would be limited demand for the other stuff. However, you cannot deny that the product will be of lesser quality, with possibly more revenue coming in thanks to wider distribution, and less required payments for both on air talent as well as for media rights for the teams themselves.
They will be making more revenue because csnh didn't hit the revenues they thought they would. If they had, they would have made much more than dtv is expecting to. Trust me, csnh didn't just have all that quality because they wanted to make fans happy. They thought they could monetize it, that there was a demand for that quality of a network in the marketplace and they could capitalize. They were dead wrong.
Of course they wanted to make money while putting out a quality product. Now, they'll be making more money off a lesser quality product. Unfortunately the quality product was making the fans that had access to it "happy" as well.
If they had come down at least SOME, they would probably be in a better state financially than they will be NOW< moving forward. So,are you saying the Astros have no hope of competing now, at all, ever? Because going by what you are saying, it sounds like the ONLY way they had any hope of compete long term was if all the carriers caved on CSNH's original asking price. Anything less, well, the Astros might as well just not even try from here on out, right?
None of the parties dispute that only one carriage offer was taken to the partners. The judge agreed that the one proposal was a bad deal because it would have resulted in losses. We can theorize forever about various points of compromise, but none were offered and taken to the partners. By all accounts, the interest in carriage by providers was limited, as is evidenced by the lack of offers.
Count me in this group. I will be extremely happy to just see the games. I don't have time to watch the other stuff. Looking forward to being able to DVR the games now with DTV.
