MEDIA—Closure Won’t Halt Drive for Local Cable News Station

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Despite news that Adelphia Communications Corp. will shut down Orange County’s sole 24-hour local cable news channel, the prospects of a similar operation opening up in L.A. are far from dead, according to a number of local media executives.

Ironically, one of the biggest boosters of a local news station is Bill Rosendahl, Adelphia’s Southern California regional vice president. Citing heavy losses, Rosendahl announced last week that Adelphia intends to close Orange County Newschannel (OCN) in September unless a financial white knight comes along to rescue the station.

“This was an economic decision, period. When Adelphia looks at its overall portfolio, it can’t justify the bleeding that’s been going on for the past 22 months,” Rosendahl said. “I’m convinced that over the next 12-month period you are going to see one or two efforts to try to give birth to a channel like this in Los Angeles.”

This fall, California News Service, a Sacramento startup run by former Cable News Network executives, will begin a statewide 24-hour news channel with a large presence in the Los Angeles area, said Terry Crowfoot, a talent agent and former news executive at Fox and ABC who has been hired to help launch the station.

“(CNS) is going to be providing news on a 24-hour basis on various cable systems throughout the state,” Crowfoot said. “There will be a lot of news out of L.A. because it’s the biggest population center in the state.”

The independent CNS model is different than most local cable news channels that have emerged in the past year or so in cities like Tampa, Fla. and Austin, Texas. Those stations are owned by cable giant AOL Time Warner and run exclusively on that company’s cable systems. New York’s NY1, the dean of 24-hour local news stations, also is owned by Time Warner’s cable division. Comcast Corp., Adelphia and other large cable providers are experimenting with 24-hour local news stations as well.

“The reason that NY1 works so well is we know our audience,” said Edward Pachetti, a spokesman for the station. “We cover the local Town Hall meetings on Staten Island or the fire in the Bronx that get missed in the half-hour of news on other stations.”

Rosendahl said there was a thirst for local news in Los Angeles. The problem, he noted, is not one of demand, but economics. Since Adelphia bought OCN from Century Communications Corp. in 1999 (the station was started in 1990 by Freedom Communications, parent company of the Orange County Register), the advertising-supported station had a loyal viewership but lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars a month,” he said. That was on top of $2 million invested by Adelphia to upgrade equipment, Rosendahl said.

“Ad sales this year have been flat throughout the nation. It was not as robust as we hoped it would be,” Rosendahl said.

Despite Adelphia’s difficulty making money, Rosendahl remains convinced that it’s only a matter of time before Angelenos will be able to tune into a 24-hour station offering a steady diet of local news, sports, weather, traffic and public policy discussions. The Los Angeles area has a larger population than Orange County and would be more attractive to advertisers, he said.

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