Liverani Moves On

This isn't quite breaking news...it was announced earlier this month, but we just found out now courtesy of an Alert OMW Reader.

Long-time FOX Sports Ohio senior vice president/general manager Steve Liverani is leaving the Northeast Ohio regional sports network, and will take the same post running FOX Sports Florida and sister network Sun Sports.

Quoting an FS Ohio press release:

Under Liverani’s leadership, FOX Sports Ohio has enjoyed tremendous success, expanding its local and regional programming beyond its extensive coverage of professional teams and creating added value for advertisers, affiliates, team partners and viewers.

Liverani was instrumental in securing long-term rights agreements with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Cincinnati Reds, along with Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati. These key programming agreements, along with the Columbus Blue Jackets, Cincinnati Bengals and two high school football “Game of the Week” packages, have established FOX Sports Ohio as the premier regional sports network in Ohio.

Liverani will continue to run FOX Sports Ohio until his replacement is found.

Liverani started running the operations and production departments at what was then known as SportsChannel Ohio back in 1994.

Of course, back that long ago, the network that became FOX Sports Net Ohio was the local cable rightsholder of the Cleveland Indians, a key sports franchise which branched out on its own with SportsTime Ohio in 2006.

Since then, FSN/FS Ohio held onto the Cavaliers, becoming the primary home of the local NBA team...with all but a handful of games airing only on the sports network. FS Ohio simulcasts a small number of games on Raycom Media MyNetwork TV affiliate WUAB/43 "My 43".

FOX Sports Ohio has also beefed up its local ancilliary programming, including new regular shows covering the area's local sports teams. That's production FSN Ohio basically didn't do before STO came into being...