The theme for this one is change… in one way or the other…
CHARTER, NOT COMCAST: Northeast Ohio customers of Time Warner Cable, the area’s dominant cable provider, were preparing themselves to deal with Comcast.
The merger of Time Warner and Comcast has been in the works, and is currently awaiting federal regulatory approval.
It’s that bid to garner approval that led Comcast and Time Warner to team up with a third company, Charter Communications…which will either directly or indirectly take 3.9 million subscribers off of Comcast’s hands.
1.4 million of those subscribers going to Charter are current Time Warner Cable subscribers, including all TWC customers here in Ohio.
Here’s the Comcast press release on the deal, which doesn’t specifically mention the Charter-Ohio part of it.
But this report from WKYC’s Kristin Anderson does (warning, autostart video ahead!):
If an acquisition between Comcast and Time Warner is approved, all of Ohio, including Cleveland, Akron-Canton, Springfield, Cincinnati and Dayton will become Charter.
We know very little about Charter, so here’s a link to the Charter forum on the excellent site Broadband Reports (nee’ DSL Reports).
Like Comcast, Time Warner and other cable companies, Charter is in the process of converting analog customers into digital ones, and promises faster Internet speeds and more HD channels as a result of its “Spectrum” project.
For its part, Time Warner has been headed for such a conversion, which will assuredly happen (sometime) even if the Comcast/Charter deal unwinds.
Keep in mind, as we’ve noted here before, that the regulatory process is taking its time, and even if the merger is approved, you won’t likely see changes to the Time Warner (then Charter) systems locally at least through this year, if not well into 2015…
MORE TIME WARNER: While Time Warner is still Time Warner, some changes could be on the way.
In its regulatory notices for Northeast Ohio, the company says it “may reposition” popular regional sports channel SportsTime Ohio to the “Digital Variety” tier.
The notices also warn that later this month, TWC will reslot some (not all) of its unencryped local digital channel feeds to new QAM channels…and advises those using such tuners to rescan after that is complete.
On or after May 16, 2014, we will be making technical changes to our cable systems that may disrupt your ability to view the following unencrypted (“in-the-clear”) channels on a digital television or other device that includes a QAM tuner (a “ClearQAM device”): WGN, EWTN, WIVM, WJW HD, WJW ANTENNA TV, WEWS HD, WEWS LIVE WELL, WOIO MeTV, WVPX, WAOH, WRLM, WMFD, WDLI and WGGN; If this occurs, you will need to go into the settings menu on your ClearQAM device and perform a new channel scan in order to resume viewing these channels. Customers using digital cable set-top boxes will not notice any change.
The notice link we’ve posted is for TWC’s Cleveland area systems, but similar language exists in all the notices for this area.
The main page is here:
ELISA GONE, BUT TO WHERE: After making it known on social media that she was leaving Tribune Fox affiliate WJW/8 “Fox 8 News”, reporter/weekend anchor Elisa Amigo’s move made the Plain Dealer.
But just like us, PD media writer Mark Dawidziak doesn’t know where exactly where she’s headed, though he does say she’s headed for “a primary anchor job in another market”.
Dawidziak reports that the Fox 8 is also saying goodbye to reporter Emily Valdez, whose contract wasn’t renewed by the folks on South Marginal/Dick Goddard Way.
He also says a replacement for outgoing president/general manager Greg Easterly should be named “by the end of next week”.
The PD’s Dawidziak says chatter at Fox 8 brings up possible replacements, including two big in-house names…VP/promotion and programming Kevin Salyer, and VP/general sales manager Paul Perozeni. (We’re hearing that same chatter.)
We, of course, have history with Salyer, who took strong exception to our reporting that station icons “Big Chuck and Lil’ John” were basically forced off the air by then-owner Fox Broadcasting, which was looking to clear other programming.
Our item was very quickly followed by Chuck Schodowski announcing his exit as a retirement to the Plain Dealer’s Julie Washington.
But our reporting seemed to be validated by “Big Chuck” himself, who noted in his farewell special that Salyer kept the show on the air for many recent years.
Since then, post-Fox O&O status, Salyer returned Schodowski and “Lil’ John” Rinaldi to the air for a regular Saturday “best of skits” program, which also acts as fill for programs WJW can’t air due to rights issues on its secondary digital channel Antenna TV (8.2).
Currently, that means “BC&LJ” airs Sunday nights on the local Antenna TV feed, displacing “Barney Miller”…though for the life of us, we can’t figure out who has the rights to that show in the Cleveland market.
Being a programming-oriented blog, we don’t really know what Perozeni brings to the table, aside from being the top sales executive at a very successful station.
But despite getting electronically “called on the carpet” by Mr. Salyer for the above, we believe that he would seem to be a natural replacement for Easterly, who left for the top job at Tribune’s WGN/9 in Chicago.
For one, Easterly came to the top management job at WJW out of the news department, and Salyer has been a strong executive in the programming department.
And programming is very important, a key to Fox 8’s success after a long run as Cleveland’s CBS affiliate…
FORMERLY WITH FOX 8: Long-time “Fox 8 News” evening anchor Stacey Bell left the station, taking a job at Cablevision all-news channel “News 12 Long Island”.
She’s headed for a big role in the city itself.
Bell announced to her Twitter followers that she’s heading to NBC O&O WNBC/4 in New York City.
We asked her what she’d be doing at “NBC 4 New York”, and Stacey told us she would be “reporting and co-anchoring weekend evenings” with the station’s existing weekend anchor, David Ushery.
Our congratulations to Stacey Bell, and best wishes for her at one of the biggest local TV platforms there is…
SHORTY IN THE (DA?) HOUSE: A popular radio and TV personality has landed in Cleveland.
He’s “Shorty da Prince”, known to viewers of BET as a host on the network’s music video show, “106 & Park”, until last year.
Radio One hip hop WENZ/107.9 “Z107.9” announced Wednesday that “Shorty” will fill the rather large on-air shoes of Colby “Colb” Tyner, the Radio One Cleveland cluster’s former operations manager, who left for a corporate programming job at Radio One’s Washington DC-area headquarters.
Off air, Tyner was replaced in Cleveland by Atlanta’s Bill Black.
But despite his TV work, “Shorty” (known on his driver’s license as Jordan Johnson) is a radio guy.
Before going to TV, Shorty was an air personality on a sister Radio One station in Detroit, WGPR/107.5 “Hot 107.5”. Radio One LMAs the station from its longtime owner, the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons (yes, we had to copy and paste that). The Masons also owned Detroit’s WGPR-TV/62, now a CBS O&O as WWJ-TV.
Before Detroit, the Wikipedia article on Mr. Johnson (go get a rather large grain of salt first) says he won a contest on St. Louis’ KATZ, and then became a top rated air personality on that city’s hip hop WHHL “Hot 104.1″…like WENZ and WGPR, also a Radio One station.
He’ll step into “Z107.9″‘s afternoon drive slot on Monday, May 5th…
RIP BOB MCLEAN: Veteran Canadian TV and radio host Bob McLean has passed away at the age of 81.
All Access has details, including details about why we’re including him in an item on a Northeast Ohio media blog:
He hosted “THE BOB MCLEAN SHOW” on WUAB-TV/CLEVELAND in 1966-70
Your Primary Editorial Voice(tm) wasn’t exactly in the show’s presumed primary demo when it aired on Channel 43, so we’ll have to rely on others for any description of that program…
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