Whipped Cream Difficulties

109 losses, and 13 in a row.

But wait, it gets better!

Comcast SportsNet Houston, the cable network that carries the Astros games – the cable network that recorded a 0.0 Nielsen rating for last Sunday’s Astros game – is in a nasty dispute with various affiliates and with the Astros. According to the HouChron, CSN hasn’t paid rights fees to the Astros for the past five months three months. (Edited to add 9/29: I swear the article said “five months” when I read it Saturday morning, but everyone says “three months” now. I’m not sure if the HouChron got it wrong and corrected it, or if I misread the article originally.) The affiliates are unhappy because they believe “structural issues” are keeping CSN from expanding.

CSN Houston is available in only about 40 percent of Houston’s 2.2 million TV households and has not been able to negotiate carriage agreements with DirecTV, Dish Network, Suddenlink, AT&T U-verse or Verizon FiOS.

And thus, the Comcast/NBC Universal affiliates have filed an involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition against CSN, apparently in an attempt to address these “structural issues”.

It just hasn’t been a good year for the Astros. Good thing I didn’t bet on them to win the World Series.