The Astros & Rockets Get Greedy

Regarding "Mayor: Network dispute ‘intolerable’" (Thursday Sports page C7), while I'm glad Mayor Parker is concerned about the Houston Astros and Rockets fans who might be upset about not being able to see their games broadcast locally, I'm more concerned about the solution being proposed by CSN, the syndicate primarily comprising Comcast, the Houston Astros and the Houston Rockets.  According to David Barron's previous articles, CSN proposes to charge every television household in a five state area up to $3.40 per month so that a relatively tiny handful of households outside of Comcast can have access to the games.

 

This begs two questions:

 

1) Why not just make access to these games a voluntary subscription fee, an option that AT&T and the satellite broadcasters proposed months ago?  Clearly this is the fairest approach, since people who don't care about the Rockets or Astros would not be forced to pay for something they don't want.  And as Barron's various articles have pointed out, historically, only 1% of all households tune in Rockets or Astros games anyway. 

 

2) Has CSN no shame?  Their colossal money grab would siphon hundreds of millions every year from the pockets of helpless consumers.  Assuming they get the $3.40 fee they are angling for, they would rake in an extra $4.5 Million per month from the 1.3 million non-Comcast subscribers in the Houston area alone.  Assuming they cover the same area as Fox Sports did previously, that figure would more than quadruple to 6 million non-Comcast households.  Making reasonable assumptions about population growth, CSN's money grab might net them as much as One Trillion Dollars over the next 64 years, roughly the remaining lifespan of the average 21 year old subscriber.

 

Mayor Parker's ambiguous statements are troubling to me.  Is she concerned about the little guys that will be forced to pay this fee against their will, or is she more concerned about the wealthy broadcasters and sports franchises with their hands in our pockets?  And where does it all end?  If our civic and business leaders can rationalize this expropriation, they can rationalize things a lot worse.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress
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