Talking The Astros Sale With Biz of Baseball's Maury Brown

Astros County has a great interview with Maury Brown, one of the finest sports business writers around. He was very integral in pushing the coverage of the Astros sale to Jim Crane. He took some time to answer some questions on his coverage and what Houston should think about the new owner and the whole process.

You should really go read the whole thing, but the most interesting part for me was this answer about the newly minted regional sports network:

I've spent hours speaking to those that are involved in television rights deals, and while this deal has a wrinkle (the Rockets and Comcast being partners with the Astros in the RSN), the fact is while having games starting later due to West Coast games can be partially off-set by saying, look at all the day games in the Eastern Timezone that the Cubs play.

Brown has more to say on the issue and the financial impact of the move to the American League, but you should really go read the rest of it there. It's worth your time. The RSN stuff is important from a payroll aspect, since more money means bigger payrolls down the road. In fact, it was partly the money the Angels are getting from their RSN deal that led to them signing Albert Pujols this winter.