• August 21, 2001

CableLink Interconnects, a division of National Cable Communications (NCC), has consolidated the cable television ad insertion platforms of the Cleveland and Albany-Schenectady-Troy DMAs with fully functional, market-wide interconnects, it was announced today by Tom Olson, CEO of NCC.

Cleveland CableLink and Albany CableLink add 1.39 million households to the CableLink Interconnects lineup, which now includes 3.99 million households across seven markets.

"The consolidation of the ad sales operations within both Cleveland and Albany now gives national spot advertisers and agencies two more markets to enjoy the advantages of buying spot cable in fully interconnected markets," said Olson. "It's been proven that national ad spending is increased in a market when it becomes interconnected. We're excited to be advancing cable interconnection into more markets, which benefits both the agencies and the cable affiliates."

Cleveland and Albany join five other current CableLink markets: Buffalo, Grand Rapids, Hartford-New Haven, Providence-New Bedford and Wilkes-Barre-Scranton. In these seven markets, CableLink has combined a whopping 141 cable systems into just seven interconnects for national sales, thus drastically reducing labor and dramatically improving service and performance.

The accepted industry definition for an "interconnect" is more than 80% cable penetration, single-point sales and single-point operations.