Its already at a lost. At this point with the rockets season done I hope that they don't get a deal done and people miss the Astros season too. I know it's selfish but it will make those dicks at csn realize that they are charging too much and they get screwed on the deal like they deserve. Plus, now with VLC I can get HD quality streams anyway hooked up to my tv using HDMI so I don't really care.
NBATV didn't air a single Western Conference playoff game last year. http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2012-nba-playoffs-tv-schedule/ The Rockets with Lin/Harden are a draw, and so is the West as a whole. There's an outside chance of 1 or 2 should we draw a completely boring team like Memphis, but it's much more likely to be 0 than "most".
So Hutchings is lying when he says they're working day and night to negotiate a deal? What a surprise.
Directv already charges a **** load of money for garbage channels. If you're paying them and can't watch the Rockets, you're being swindled.
Like I said, it depends on who we play. Us playing Memphis very likely would land us a few spots on NBA TV. You could potentially have Spurs vs Lakers, OKC vs Warriors, Denver vs Clippers. Not hard to pick the series least popular out of all those.
So because he spent a fortune to buy the team he gets the right to keep fans from watching the games? The game is about the fans first and foremost. Don't piss off your customers. The fact of the matter is that they went into this CSN thing without a good plan in place for getting it on the cable providers. That should have been one of the first things they had settled or nearly settled - it seems like they built the network and only then said "ok providers, go ahead and add this to your lineup". Did they not learn anything from watching Longhorn Network? Whatever is going on behind the scenes, I don't care. The fans are getting screwed and Jim Crane has more to do with it than anyone else as the owner of the majority share. The providers have deals in place with FSN and have much less to gain from adding CSN with the state of the Rockets and Astros at present. This is only going to get done if CSN caves or they agree to put it on premium tier.
I don't want to speak for him...but I don't think that's what he was saying. CSN was a done deal before Crane bought the team...it was built into the purchase price that they were getting in on this new station and all the revenue streams that come from it. I think his suggestion is that Crane must have had some notion of the revenue streams they could expect from it based on price of other RSN's and the revenue streams that flow through to teams from them.
When you are spending $800 million a business and part of that is a channel that has not started up yet, one would think that part of your due diligence would be to assess the strategy for securing carriage for the channel.
Yep, you would think. When I heard Crane say If fans want to watch they can switch to comcast I should have quit listening. He could care less about the fan base, he is convinced that nothing matters right now, when the team wins again the fans will pack the park. Sadly he is probably right, but it sickens me as a lifelong fan to hear the owner basically say he doesn't give a **** about his fan base right now
hate seeming like I'm defending comcast but again - it was known there was some risk given the precedence of portland, new york et al. But the overall benefit of owning their own channel outweighed the risk and they knew the product they were putting together was going to be better with their control and input. Moreover, they probably factored in downtime to their assessment models knowing this could happen. That in and of itself doesn't make them wrong or right. It makes them capitalists. And they are working within the means of the system given. Where capitalism isn't working is on the provider side. They seem to want a bail out for their screw up and the fact that they don't want to be forced to assume the costs of two RSN's. Therefore they have bound together and are are working in unison to try and reduce the price point of a product in line with that of it's comparables. (this is based off the reported news that the asking price is in line with the deal negotiated by the rangers - a team in a similar market and market size) also - remember that these contracts are not for 3-5 years, they are much longer. Therefore, the current product on field/court - while it has some bearing - should not dictate a reduction in value.
I'm assuming he did...but you know there's a wild card component to that going in. Ultimately, they will make more with this than they did under FSSW. They looked at other markets and made estimates of what they thought they could get. Look...ultimately, this is going to get done. No idea when. But you can't provide TV packages in a city and forever ignore the one station that broadcasts that city's MLB, NBA and MLS games. Not saying a deal is imminent...but that it will get done ultimately.
Do you think there's any chance maybe next season Les can put a few Rockets games on local network tv just like the Dynamo, they have 6 games airing on KPRC Local 2 including tonight's game.
My brain tells me that is true...but then I look at Portland. They have probably been saying that for six years. Meanwhile, it has become apparent that the guys in charge at CSN claim to be "working day and night" to get deals done while their negotiating strategy is basically not to negotiate. At some point, you have to have something to give up in order to reach an accord. One would also think that, in choosing a launch date and price structure, CSN would have figured out how long the FSSW contracts were with each provider and read the tea leaves accordingly. They either did not do so, or simply do not care whether a deal gets done. They are big on the PR of how the providers are the sole problem and they are working hard to get games on the air. Sadly, they are short on anything that even resembles good faith negotiation. In this regard, taking Crane's comments into account, they are content to have a significant chunk of the fans not watch the games, play the PR game and get people to switch to Comcast. Not a good strategy...especially at a time in franchise history when they need to be more fan friendly than ever.
Welcome to the thread, Comcast Social Media Team! Your talking points are so fresh. It was CSN that took the sports programing away from carriers that had contractual relationships with the teams; in order to redirect and maximize the profits they generated. Live sports will continue to grow it's revenue stream in the age of DVR's because people are less likely to skip them on an event that becomes stale once the real time showing is over. Ads on regular shows will lose relative value. If you don't think that's true, just look at the stupid money baseball is throwing around, 7 years $180 million dollars to a 30 year old pitcher? This is just a war between capitalist and we are just collateral damage. They took sports and made it all about the dollars. SOP for the GOP Same lawyers, same strategy
You are really going to try to turn this into a partisan political discussion? Take your hatred of people who dare to disagree with you politically to the D&D. This thread is about our inability to follow our teams. Using it as an opportunity to bash your political opposition is wildly inappropriate.
I'll bet you a dollar this doesn't take 6 years to resolve. Portland's situation is a little unique....and CSN Houston isn't just one franchise's games...it's 3 franchises' games in the 4th biggest city in the country. Crane's comments are part of the negotiation. You can't take at face value the comments of people in the midst of a negotiation. He has a product that needs exposure, and I promise you he knows that. They're negotiating a 20 year deal with carriers at this point.
