Charter Wraps Up Regional Hiring

Charter Communications Inc. has completed the last round of new hirings for its regional divisions, naming former Time Warner Cable executive Eric Brown to run the Western division and appointing seven regional vice presidents for the Southeastern division.

Brown, who will be based in Los Angeles and report to executive vice president and chief operating officer Margaret Bellville, will be responsible for operations serving about 1.1 million customers in seven states, including California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

Brown has extensive experience in operations and programming, having most recently served as president of Time Warner Cable's Minnesota division, responsible for about 210,000 customers in the Greater Minneapolis area. Prior to that position, Brown had worked in a variety of senior operations and marketing roles with Time Warner Cable, Century Communications Corp., Times Mirror Cable Television, and Digital Music Express.

Charter Southeast division senior vice president Chuck McElroy named seven new vice presidents, including three from his former employer, Cox Communicatons Inc.

McElroy, who joined Charter in March after about 9 years with Cox, hired two former Cox employees — Richard Bell and Robert Carter — as vice president of finance and vice president of Charter Business Networks, respectively.

Other additions to the Southeast division were Powell Bedgood, vice president of engineering; Alan Clairmont, vice president of marketing; Michael Kelley, vice president of advertising sales; Michele Parks, vice president of human resources and Tracy Pitcher, vice president of customer care.

The division consists of Charter systems in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Bedgood had been Charter's vice president of digital services in its St. Louis corporate offices.

Clairmont comes to Charter from AT&T Broadband, where he was vice president of marketing and sales in the Pittsburgh area. Kelley has been with Charter since 1999 as director of advertising for the mid-South region. Parks most recently served as the director of human resources for Charter's Georgia operations. Pitcher joined Charter in 2001 as director of customer care in the company's Northeast region. She moved to the Southeast region in July 2002 and led the local team that opened Charter's contact center in Greenville County, S.C.