There were at least some people who thought, back when bankrupt Adelphia announced it would agree to be split up and acquired by Time Warner Cable and Comcast in a $17-billion dollar deal, that the deal would be done by now. Well, not so fast.An apparent dispute with creditors has bogged down the effort to jettison Adelphia's assets. The Plain Dealer's Henry Gomez reports that Adelphia has revised its reorganization plan in an effort to end the dispute.What does it all mean? July 31st, that's … [Read more...]

OK, so the whole Indians opening day thing was a bit overwhelming the past week or two...and we missed Julie Washington's radio column in the Plain Dealer over the weekend.Highlights:* They may as well start running a regular shuttle between the WCPN/ideastream headquarters on Playhouse Square and the WKSU/89.7 building near the Kent State University campus. This time, it's a move from Kent to Cleveland, as veteran WKSU reporter Mark Urycki joins the Cleveland pubradio outlet on Monday after … [Read more...]

We got the call from SportsTime Ohio head Jim Liberatore this afternoon...unfortunately, on the road while nowhere near a notepad or keyboard, so much of this is out of our recollection of the conversation about five hours ago.The biggest item - Liberatore tells OMW that the activation mess yesterday with DirecTV and STO "should be fixed" by tomorrow night's Indians-Mariners game. At least, that's what the DirecTV folks are telling him. Apparently, the need to activate the channel in the first … [Read more...]

OMW dutifully passed along an early Plain Dealer report on the Cleveland.com website... that former WKNR/850 host Bruce Drennan was now facing federal charges of cheating on his taxes. We later noticed the story that actually ran in the newspaper the next morning, and figured we'd better clear up a couple of points in Drennan's case that were not covered in the initial Internet report.In specific, it appears the feds will NOT charge Drennan in the gambling probe itself, which saw two other men … [Read more...]

For once, it's a timely Roger Brown sports media column in today's Plain Dealer, with what looks to be a pretty accurate representation of the mess Indians fans with DirecTV encountered over the weekend...well, at least from the STO side of things, anyway.STO boss Jim Liberatore confirms what we'd been told yesterday by a team ticket sales rep... that the team has gotten "hundreds" of calls from irate DirecTV subscribers blacked out of one or both contests with the Minnesota Twins. DirecTV has … [Read more...]

So, it's nearly 2 AM and we're making the rounds of the sites put up by our colleagues in the radio/TV-online world. Our first late Sunday night stop is always NorthEast Radio Watch, crafted at around this time with care by our long-time friend Scott Fybush.A less regular stop is Mike Anderson's excellent STLMedia.net, produced by a former radio veteran in the St. Louis market. But we've been reading regularly since KTRS/550's mid-morning host got himself into hot water and got fired for a … [Read more...]

We stumbled onto this one in a search for news about SportsTime Ohio.A Broadcasting & Cable Magazine article on local TV stations doing HD sports broadcasts delves further into the relationship between Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC/3 and STO. WKYC produces not only its own schedule of 20 Indians games, but also the entire Indians schedule for SportsTime Ohio as a part of the 10 year pact with the team.But although there are more details about that relationship in the article by Ken … [Read more...]

Ongoing with some of the stuff we've been dealing with over the past couple of days:STO BLACKOUT DAY 2: Our current theory is that DirecTV is run by trained monkeys banging away at keyboards at random. No, we're sorry, we didn't mean to insult chimps.For the second straight day, DirecTV customers in the Cleveland market are having trouble getting SportsTime Ohio. This time, the trouble hits home for us...as our voracious Indians-fan relative here in suburban Akron was getting a blank screen … [Read more...]

We're hearing numerous reports from DirecTV subscribers within the immediate Cleveland/Akron/Canton area that this afternoon's Cleveland Indians game wasn't available to them on the team's SportsTime Ohio channel (DirecTV channel 657). The folks we're hearing from are well within the "zone 1/2" local footprint for STO.As far as we know, there should be no reason other than a technical/operations problem with DirecTV that the game wasn't available. We'd strongly advise folks to call or E-Mail … [Read more...]

As usually happens after a busy week here on the Mighty Blog of Fun(tm), we get updates on previous items...or find out more about what's been heard on the air during the week.Here we go again...NUMBER 1: As it turns out, the TV side of FSN Ohio/WKNR's "Cleveland Rants" isn't yet being done at the network's headquarters in Independence - on Rockside Road across I-77 from the Clear Channel World Domination Headquarters on Oak Tree. (If we've mapped the location right, it's right behind the Bob … [Read more...]