It's been a constant complaint in Your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm): With all the talk of the Cleveland Indians' new cable TV network, we'd heard nothing about how the Indians and new network SportsTime Ohio would handle Adelphia cable, the system serving the bulk of Cuyahoga County's cable customers...not to mention us stragglers down here in Summit County not served by Time Warner Cable.
The omission was odd, in our minds...if STO's Indians games would be seen by "90 percent" of local cable/satellite homes by Opening Day, what about the LARGEST system in the home county of the team? Why not mention it?
We stumbled onto an article in West Life, a weekly newspaper serving western Cleveland suburbs, with the answer. According to an article by the newspaper's Kevin Kelley, Fastball Sports/STO chief Jim Liberatore says Adelphia IS being negotiated separately from Time Warner at this point.
It is the very first indication we've had that anyone was paying attention to this problem. Of course, we blame Liberatore and the Indians/Fastball/STO less than we blame Roger Brown, the quirky sports media columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It's a question Brown should have asked and gotten answered weeks ago.
Instead of the high-profile sports media columnist for Ohio's largest newspaper, we got the answer from a reporter for a small weekly paper that's dwarfed in size even by the Sun Newspaper weekly chain. What's next? Is Roger "Real Estate Listings" Brown going to get scooped by the Weekly Shopper?
OMW itself tried to get this answer out of the Indians, but we don't have the contacts that Mr. Brown has. (Even without that, we've still beaten him on several sports media news items. And for crying out loud...we're a BLOG.)
So, now that the question is answered, and we know SportsTime Ohio is indeed negotiating with Adelphia separately, we'll again de-mount from our high horse until we learn that a deal's been reached. But honestly, guys, if you can't put together a deal involving two months' worth of games on a system that's going away in late May, to be replaced by an existing rightsholder, we're not sure what's going on...
Thursday, February 23, 2006
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2 comments:
OMW itself tried to get this answer out of the Indians, but we don't have the contacts that Mr. Brown has.
What? You don't have the general access number for the front office? It's in the phone book. :-)
-dever
We have indeed contacted the Indians' front office, but did not receive a return call. Maybe they were busy trying to figure out who or what we were. :)
-OMW
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