Jeffrey Abbas, the former president and CEO of the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), has been named president and general manager of Toledo, Ohio-based Buckeye Cablevision, and will officially take the reins on May 13.
Abbas resigned from the NCTC in March 2011, and was succeeded by 32-year cable vet Rich Fickle about three months later. Before joining NCTC in 1993, Abbas was VP of programming for the former Adelphia Communications.
Abbas will report to Joe Jensen, the executive vice president of cable and telecommunications for Block Communications, Buckeye’s parent company. Former Buckeye president and general manager Brad Mefferd will remain with the company as an executive vice president role, according to a company official.
“I am looking forward to joining the team at Buckeye and getting back into the operations side of the cable industry,” Abbas said, in a statement. “I’m eager to serve the Buckeye customers in providing them a robust suite of features and programming, and build on the excellent customer service that always has been a hallmark of the company.”
Buckeye, which competes primarily with AT&T U-verse, DirecTV and Dish Network, is a member of the NCTC. Among recent technology-related moves, the company has launched Arris’s hybrid QAM/IP Moxi gateways, and unleashed several DOCSIS 3.0-fueled residential broadband tier, including one that tops out at 105 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream.
“We are fortunate to attract a man of Mr. Abbas’ training and experience to lead Buckeye in these challenging times, as the cable industry faces pressure from unrelenting programming costs, rapidly changing technology, and increased competition from web-based programming sources,” said Block chairman Allan Block, in a release.
