Tuesday, March 14, 2006

BREAKING NEWS: SportsTime Ohio Signs Up Adelphia

SportsTime Ohio has locked up what perhaps is the single biggest cable signup after Time Warner.

STO and the Indians are announcing an agreement with the Adelphia cable systems in Northern Ohio to carry the team-owned network. On Adelphia's main Greater Cleveland system, STO games will air on cable channel 17, and the SportsTime Ohio site lists a number of other channels in other Adelphia areas. (We'll list them at the bottom of this item.)

It was announced that Adelphia would start carrying the STO games on Thursday, but the first spring training game actually started tonight, at least on Adelphia's channel 17 on the Greater Cleveland system. Here are a couple of screen shots from the pre-game show:


There's no word on where STO's high-definition broadcasts will air on Adelphia, but we'd be surprised if they didn't show up on the newly-created "HD Bonus" channel (798), which only airs FOX Sports Net Ohio's HD Cleveland Cavaliers games right now. We see no indication that the channel is intended solely for FSN Ohio, and indeed, the name would indicate otherwise. STO's HD broadcasts won't start until the first regular season game.

The signup of Adelphia is hugely important to SportsTime Ohio, as Adelphia is the largest system in Cuyahoga County and has other suburban and rural outposts outside the immediate Cleveland area.

Here's your SportsTime Ohio Adelphia channel list:

Greater Cleveland (except Macedonia), Port Clinton- 17
Macedonia - 97
Lorain County - 23
Amsterdam, Cadiz - 19
Ashtabula - 30
Bryan - 15
Caldwell, Cambridge, Coshocton, Newark - 53
Carrollton, Minerva, New Philadelphia - 69
Celina, Van Wert - 74
Defiance, Waterville, Wauseon, Versailles - 37
Marion - 2

This list is adapted from STO's website. We're assuming that since Adelphia will be absorbed into Time Warner Cable in the summer, that Adelphia didn't spend a lot of time trying to get a single cable channel.

STO also officially announced what we reported earlier, the addition of Toledo's Buckeye Cablesystem and its sister Erie County Cablevision, as well as a deal with Doylestown Cable, and a small cable system we've never heard of, BTC Cablevision (Bascom, OH). Bascom is apparently located just outside of Tiffin...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

After watching 1 inning, I can say that I am not excited about the on screen graphics. I feel that the score bar is positioned too low at the top of the screen. More than likely it will take some getting used to.

Anonymous said...

BTC is awesome! The entire phone, internet and cable network is fiber optic, and the system is not-for-profit so the rates are much lower than what everybody else pays.

http://www.bascomtelephone.com/

Anonymous said...

What a joke! This was a ploy by the Indians and Time Warner to try and pigeon hole the providers that currently refuse to sign up with STO.

Adelphia customers got the shaft on this, but just don't know it because they won't actually realize have to pay until this summer when Adelphia turns to Time Warner.

Seems clear that when Time Warner comes in there is going to be a hefty increase in monthly fees to pay for this and acquisition costs. They are using STO as a way to keep customers from switching...