With Root Sports about to launch next Monday, I am pleased that fans who did not have access to Comcast SportsNet Houston or chose not to subscribe to Comcast cable will now be able to see Astros and Rockets games on DirecTV or AT&T U-verse.
But I also will be sad to see CSN Houston fade to black on Sunday night.
Here’s the best thing I can say about CSN Houston: For all the time I spent writing about it – 80 or 90 stories, more or less, in the last 14 months, plus hundreds of tweets during hours of bankruptcy court hearings – I spent even more time watching it.
In this era of two-minute sportscasts on local TV stations, I will miss in particular the 30-minute nightly newscast, “SportsNet Central.” On occasion, I’ll even miss seeing our local radio talk show hosts trying to out-shout each other on “Sports Talk Live.”
Those show titles mean nothing to those who didn’t have access to CSN Houston, but they represented a comprehensive look at the day in Houston sports. Local fans hadn’t seen anything to match it since the dawn of Home Sports Entertainment in the early 1980s or the brief, unsuccessful attempt by Fox Sports Southwest to air nightly newscasts a decade ago.
CSN Houston also had Dynamo and Dash games, a daily “Football Focus” preview/recap show, weekly high school games, Rice and University of Houston shows, regional college shows and interview/profile shows featuring Earl Campbell, Bill Fitch, Jackie Burke, Zina Garrison and John Lucas. There were infomercials, reruns and canned national programming, to be sure, but there was something original and local every evening.
DirecTV Sports Networks, which will operate the Houston channel as its fourth Root Sports franchise, has yet to disclose its program lineup. However, given that 96 of 141 CSN Houston employees are being laid off, we can presume there will be no nightly newscast and no talk show – just the daily wheel of pregame show/game/postgame show/game re-air that was standard fare for years from Fox Sports Southwest.
Instead of local news from anchors and reporters Steve Bunin, Kelli Johnson, Corey Hepola, Leila Rahimi, Howard Chen, Sebastian Salazar, Tiffany Blackmon, John Kelly, Marius Payton, James Palmer, Bill Doleman and Sara Eckert, we will have hours and hours of syndicated mixed martial arts, poker, extreme sports and “The Dan Patrick Show” reruns.
Perhaps there will be other local shows, including the occasional high school football game. But unless there’s an Astros or Rockets game, chances are there won’t be much worth watching.
The only on-air talent remaining at Root Sports will be FS Southwest/FS Houston veterans Kevin Eschenfelder and Bart Enis, who presumably will handle Rockets and Astros pre- and postgame shows, and Julia Morales, the lone survivor among the CSN Houston newcomers.
Bill Worrell, Matt Bullard and Clyde Drexler will remain on Rockets games, and Calvin Murphy will return on Rockets studio shows. Bill Brown, Alan Ashby and Geoff Blum will return for the 2015 Astros season.
Everybody else is looking for a job. That includes Steve Bunin, who left ESPN for what he thought was a chance to get in on the ground floor of a venture that could take him through the balance of his career.
Bunin’s Houston experience has not been without its upside. His wife, a rheumatologist, enjoys her job at Methodist Hospital, and the family has a house and a religious community that suits its lifestyle. But now the Bunins must rebalance personal and professional considerations with the demise of CSN Houston.
“I was proud of what we did,” he said. “Coming from ESPN, I had high standards and expectations, and people in Houston tell me that we surpassed anything they had seen on television here. It was a point of pride for me to be involved with it, and it’s a lost opportunity.”
Comcast brought in a mix of experienced and younger reporters and anchors. Several had Texas ties. Morales grew up in Crandall, graduated from Kilgore College and the University of Texas and worked at several Texas TV stations. Doleman worked at KTBU (Channel 55). Blackmon worked at KXXV in Waco.
Chen graduated from Dulles High School. Eckert is from La Grange and graduated from Texas. Hepola worked at KVUE and Johnson at Time Warner’s News 8 in Austin. Rahimi is from Denton, graduated from North Texas and worked at stations across the state. Kelly is a Houston native and a veteran of Fox Sports Houston.
There were local off-camera hires, too, including former KPRC (Channel 2) photographer Allen Reid, who in 2005 suffered a broken neck when a visiting player crashed into him under the basket during a Rockets game.
These were not strangers to Texas, and CSN Houston for many represented more than just another job stop along the way.
“We had a lot of energy,” Bunin said. “There was no ‘this is the way we do it.’ There was a lot of ‘Let’s do this, let’s see if that works, how did they do things where you worked?’ There were people who knew Texas and people who came with a more national perspective. It made for a good melting pot and for good coverage.”
Having worked for United Press International when it went bankrupt during the 1980s, I can attest to the strain that CSN Houston employees have faced over the last year. You could see it in their eyes as they made their final appearances at Minute Maid Park, Toyota Center and NRG Stadium. You could hear it as Eschenfelder signed off the final episode of “SportsTalk Live.”
But life goes on. Employees will receive severance and COBRA insurance rights – a good thing, given that a couple of employees’ spouses are due to give birth in the next few days. Once layoffs become official, a few on- and off-camera employees may have a chance to land jobs with other Comcast SportsNet regionals. Others likely will have to look outside Texas for new jobs. Some will remain to help launch Root Sports.
Several have asked what I think now that the CSN Houston saga is almost over. It isn’t over, of course. Comcast has filed a federal court appeal to regain its financial stake in CSN Houston. The Astros have sued Comcast and former Astros owner Drayton McLane, and the Rockets presumably are preparing to sue Comcast as well.
The legal wrangling will continue. CSN Houston, after Sunday night, will not.
My compliments, thanks and best wishes to those CSN Houston employees who did their best to entertain and inform Houston sports fans. Good luck to you all.
And now, for Astros and Rockets fans, Root Sports awaits.
