A Newsy Thursday

Items are popping up all over...

CC CLEVELAND'S NEW OM: Clear Channel's Cleveland cluster has found a new operations manager.

He's Keith Abrams, who comes to Oak Tree from the VP/Programming slot at CBS Radio's Denver cluster. Though the title is slightly different, he'll replace former cluster programming fixture Kevin Metheny...who parted ways with Clear Channel late last month.

Abrams also has Salt Lake City, Seattle, Charlotte, Memphis and Pittsburgh on his programming resume. We hear that he and his wife are from Pittsburgh and are "big Steelers fans", so we hope he has the good sense to lay low when the Browns and Steelers tangle later this season.

A station memo that floated into the OMW World Headquarters says Abrams will be "driving in" from Denver, and taking the operations manager reins on September 5th...

SIGN HIM UP: Crowing about his ratings successes, D.A. Peterson top 40 WDJQ/92.5 Alliance "Q92" has signed an extension with morning host DeLuca.

A station press release that floated in right before the CC memo says DeLuca is now under contract with the Canton market top 40 station through the year 2012. Quoting the release:

"Over the past two-and-a-half years, DeLuca has taken Q92 from mediocre morning numbers to the top of the Canton area Morning Drive ratings. Since coming to Morning Drive from evenings, he has always been popular with the younger segment of the radio listening audience. But DeLuca has an uncanny way of appealing to a mature audience as well."

It's not often that when talking about a new personality's success, you see a station admitting that its previous numbers were "mediocre"...

BIG TEN'ING IT: Time Warner Cable has released channel numbers where Big Ten Network games will be seen starting this weekend.

As we expected, but never wrote here, BTN's primary feed will show up on the TWC expanded basic lineup on Channel 77, where viewers will watch THE Ohio State University Buckeyes play the (lower case) Youngstown State University Penguins in the season opener.

The 77 placement makes sense, since it's right next to the analog home for SportsTime Ohio (76).

The BTN primary feed will also be aired on digital cable channel 333, and a BTN alternate feed will be available on digital cable channel 334.

The Akron Beacon Journal's George M. Thomas reports that the alternate feed will provide a bonus for Akron area sports fans this Saturday, as it'll carry the University of Akron Zips game against Big Ten school Wisconsin.

The TWC/BTN deal does include HDTV feeds and on demand services, but don't expect them to light up this weekend, says the TWC page on the deal:

Standard definition channels on our Expanded Basic and Digital Cable service levels will launch in time for the Saturday, August 30 game. High definition and Video On Demand services will be added at a later time.

As we write this on Thursday morning, even analog channel 77 doesn't seem to be "awake" on TWC's Cleveland-based (former Adelphia) system. We suspect it'll go live by the close of business Friday, but that's just a guess.

And for those on the far eastern end of the Time Warner Cable Northeast Ohio empire, the TWC page has news for you, too:

Customers in the Franklin, PA area will see Big Ten on channel 28, and portions of the Erie, PA area will see the channel on position 31.

Here at your Mighty Blog, we don't know what "portions of the Erie, PA area" means, but the TWC system there is basically in two parts - the legacy TWC part of the system, which covers the city of Erie, and the former Adelphia system, which covers the county outside Erie itself...