Naming Rights Up For Grabs

The name change from Clear Channel Connecticut to Jim Koplik Presents won’t be the only adjustment for concert fans in the state after naming rights deals at two regional venues expire next summer.

The ctnow.com moniker will be dropped at the Meadows Music Centre shed in Hartford in July as will careerbuilder.com at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford.

Ctnow.com is the Web address of the Hartford Courant newspaper, which currently owns the rights.

A naming deal with the Courant in 2000 added the Web site moniker to the Meadows and Oakdale names, with the Oakdale changed to careerbuilder.com in 2002.

The agreement expires in July, and the newspaper is not pursuing an extension, paper senior VP and GM Mark Aldam said.

“It happens everywhere,” Koplik, president and namesake of the Clear Channel division that owns both venues, told the Courant. “There’s barely a building in America that doesn’t have a corporate name to it. It’s just the way today’s world is.”

Koplik knows about name changes. He’s been the public face of CCE in Connecticut since the company rolled up most of the state’s concert business in 2000, including the Oakdale and the Meadows.

His own name was hung on the CCE Northeast division’s shingle in a company restructuring last fall that restored many onetime independent promoter heritage names.

The same “heritage” consideration has never really taken hold at older, venerable buildings, a point Koplik acknowledges.

“The Oakdale and the Meadows names will disappear,” Koplik told the Courant. “I don’t think the people who buy the name get the value with the heritage name.”