Birmingham Business Journal - by Gilbert Nicholson
Cable TV pioneer Don Earley is still blazing trails despite a disappointing setback.
In fact, he's come full circle. At a bank liquidation sale, Earley reclaimed assets he sold four years ago to now-defunct College Sports Southeast (CSSE) cable network.
Local mom-and-pop programming from his four low-power cable TV stations currently is distributed to some 450,000 cable households in Birmingham, Decatur, Montgomery and Anniston. In the Birmingham area alone, Earley's WOTM Channel 19 is available to 200,000 Charter Cable subscribers in 42 communities, reaching Jefferson, Walker, St. Clair and Shelby counties.
The cable companies like homespun shows such as youth football and People's Law School.
"It's unique programming you don't get on our competitors, such as satellite dish providers," says Bill Ferry, director of governmental relations for Charter Communications' Gulf Coast region. "What Don Earley does certainly adds to our channel lineup and makes a much more robust product for us."
Ever the innovator even as he contemplates retirement later this year the 60-year-old Earley has his sights set on a first for the state of Alabama: live broadcasts of regular season high school football.
High school, college sports
Starting in 1981 with the broadcast to 600 cable subscribers of Dora High School football, Earley and his family built a local production company into the Alabama Cable Network. At its apex in the late 1990s, ACN was beaming tape-delayed broadcasts of Alabama and Auburn football, basketball and other sports statewide via satellite.
Earley sold a controlling interest in ARN in 1998 to sports media executive Kirk Wood, who used it to launch Birmingham-based CSSE, the nation's first exclusive college sports cable network.
In summer 2001, after a financial partnership with HealthSouth fell through, CSSE went off the air.
Earley says he had no managerial responsibilities after he sold ARN to Wood. He insists he's not bitter and holds no animosity toward Wood or other CSSE executives for the demise of the networkWood did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Even in CSSE's early days, when the network's executives had plans for national expansion, he was all the while producing local cable programming aimed at the Gardendales and Hueytowns of the world.
In 1999, he and son Donnie set up a new studio in Hoover for a low-powered Montevallo station Earley owned, which he moved and renamed Channel 19 WOTM (for "Over the Mountain.") Earley also owned low-powered stations WJXS in Anniston and WYAM in Decatur; he later bought WMPV TV3 in Montgomery.
The strategy was to be local in the true sense of the word down to coverage of pee-wee football and distribute to local communities through big cable operators.
Earley's stations feature community beauty pageants, local law school classes, vacuum cleaner salesmen, church services, talk shows such as Bob Mosca's "Time of Your Life," and Snapper Lancaster's Central Alabama High School Sports.
And, of course, there are the infomercials. Revenue, which Earley declines to disclose, comes from commercials and selling air time to various individuals and businesses selling products.
He credits his expansive coverage of high school football last fall to Charter Cable's decision to double WOTM's presence in new communities within the last six months.
Every Friday night, using part-time contract employees, Earley dispatched three-man broadcasting crews to 17 high school football games. Cable companies such as Charter can send specific games to select communities. Alabama loves football, and Pelham, Tarrant, Fultondale and Midfield want to see their teams on TV, Earley says.
Meanwhile, after the demise of CSSE, Earley and partner John Connor Sr. bought the assets of the network at a bank liquidation sale last October. WOTM recently moved into the old CSSE studios on Lorna Lane near the intersection of Rocky Ridge Road and Lorna Road.
CSSE equipment, such as a digital servers and digital cameras, have put WOTM two years ahead of where it otherwise would have been, Earley estimates.
Keeping it down home
As he ponders his future, sitting in his office in the former CSSE headquarters, the only visible reminder of the network is a remote truck parked outside bearing the CSSE logo.
Although details haven't been finalized, Earley says he hopes to broadcast regular season high school football live this fall on his four stations.
"I'm not interested in doing college sports like Alabama and Auburn any more," he says. "It's just too competitive. I'm going to keep this low key and close to the vest. I want to do a lot of high schools and the small stuff."
He hearkens to the early days of what was then called Your Community Channel, when Earley at the time a sales agent for Burlington Northern railway reached 600 subscribers in Dora and Sumiton.
"We left that arena and went to something a lot bigger," he says. "Now we're back in that arena. I'll stay with what I know, and stay local."
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