Tonight I will leave work after my show is over, I will settle in, fix myself a plate of whatever tasty treats my girlfriend Amy has prepared for dinner, sit down on the couch and do something that I’ve been unable to do since the end of the 2011-2012 NBA season:

I will watch a local Houston Rockets broadcast from the comfort of my own home!

It almost sounds weird to say it, it’s been so long since I’ve been able to do this, and I feel like Red in Shawshank Redemption. I mean… Bill, Clyde, and Bull, complemented by the dulcet tones of Kevin Eschenfelder and Calvin Murphy on the pre and post game shows…. I mean…. This is the excitement only a free man can feel!

And damn if it isn’t a great game on tap tonight as well, a battle between the teams with the two best records in the league, the Rockets and the Memphis Grizzlies!

So tonight, in some sense, I will be getting reacquainted with some old friends (five, to be exact, when you add up all the voices o the broadcast, although if I’m not mistaken, I think Clyde is a home-only voice, so maybe it’s four … hey, don’t blame me for not knowing! I’m not the one who held out for unrealistic carriage fees!).

But in another sense, I will be getting to know someone new. All of these old faces are going to be delivered to me via a new channel. Comcast Sports Net Houston is being replaced by the AT&T/DirecTV-owned Root Sports Southwest. Honestly, as top notch as the Comcast product was in the short stints I was able to watch it (up at the studio, friends’ homes) and participate in it (I guested a few times on Sports Talk Live), at this point, if watching the Rockets in my home meant that I’d have to stand next to the television holding a coat hanger in my teeth, I’d do it.

Fortunately, Root Sports Southwest is actually fed through the cables into the back of my AT&T U-verse box, so I can throw out my coat hangers. Now, the amount of enjoyment that you will get outside of your Rockets (and, I suppose, Astros) games on Root, that is up for debate.

It all comes down to how big a fan of poker, infomercials, and Dan Patrick that you are. As the channel launched Monday morning, with an episode of some-show-where-people-were-REALLY-excited-about-poker, a quick perusal of the guide was in order. And what did I find?

LOTS and LOTS of paid programming.

Yeah, the bad news with getting to see your local Houston sports teams in the comfort of your own home is that the award-winning programming that became a staple of CSN Houston (Sports Net Central, long form interviews by Steve Bunin, etc.) has been buried by a tsunami of infomercials.

That’s the bad news. What’s the good news?

Well, the good news is that I now own a new set of Ronco knives, a Shark Rocket vacuum, and I’m signed up for a real estate seminar in February!

If you’re looking to find your Rockets tonight (or purchase a Shark Rocket vacuum this morning), here is the announcement of the channel listings, hot off the Twitter presses:

Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’….

Listen to Sean Pendergast on SportsRadio 610 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays. Also, follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.

This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2014.

Sean Pendergast is a contributing freelance writer who covers Houston area sports daily in the News section, with periodic columns and features, as well. He also hosts the morning drive on SportsRadio...