It took me a few attempts to read this because it kept pissing me off, but it was worth it. Sadly, I don't see this situation working out this season (or at least until the Astros games begin).
Really poor timing on the Rockets & Astros part - trying to get fans behind two very young teams while preventing 60% of the viewing area from seeing them.
http://blog.chron.com/ultimateastros/20 ... -progress/
Excerpt below:
Just as expectations escalate and tempers flare at the midpoint of the NBA season with the clock ticking toward baseball’s spring training, words and emotions fly thick and fast in Houston’s latest spectator sport: chatting, speculating and grousing about the carriage developments, or not, of Comcast SportsNet Houston.
Officials with the CSN Houston partners – the Rockets, Astros and NBC Sports Group – and the highest-profile carriage holdout – DirecTV – late last week issued their most pointed statements on the matter – ironically, at the same time a new round of conspiracy theories muddied the waters of a complicated, hot-button issue.
The bottom line remains as it has been since the network launched in October: CSN Houston is available in about 40 percent of the 2.2 million TV households in the Houston area, with no Rockets games on DirecTV, Dish or AT&T U-verse and limited cable carriage other than Comcast and a few small area systems as Astros season nears.
The network partners aren’t happy. Distributors aren’t pleased. And fans, particularly die-hard Rockets fans missing games because they don’t subscribe to Comcast, are looking for someone with whom to be angry.
“You can’t be a fan or customer of the team and in some way not be affected by the issue of television distribution,” said Rockets CEO Tad Brown. “Absolutely every single conversation I have in some form or fashion ends up with a conversation about distribution.
“And I appreciate that. I want to have those conversations.”
The issue remains money. CSN Houston wants what it thinks is fair market value – reportedly topping out at about $3.40 per subscriber per month in Greater Houston – and availability on expanded basic cable and satellite in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and part of New Mexico.
And the teams and the network are not shy about pulling out every emotional stop to get fans riled up at reluctant distributors.
